Hilda

November 9, 2009 by johnblakey

Hilda 9 November 2009

Remembrance Sunday, the 11th hour of the second Sunday in November, I turn on the television, the crowds stand all still, not a sound. The two minutes slip by, the Queen on creaking knees lays a wreath at the Cenotaph, my knee aches in sympathy. The Last Post played on the bugle and a salute fired on the cannon. I can’t help thinking of John Winton the author of some many humerous navy book. The time for the salute be taken from the immemorial chant “If I wasn’t a Gunner I wouldn’t be here 1” If I wasn’t a Gunner I wouldn’t be here 2”.
We are out off to see an old Friend Hilda, she is 80 and getting old and her memory is going.
We leave the cats in charge of the house, telling them that they are all good cats, which is quite untrue, but well meant. We set off early we always get lost on the way to Pontefract. Its cold and the rain drops down in a dismal wave.
Hilda is fine though her carers her son Bracken and his partner Joe have that exhausted look, common to all good carers. Hilda herself is fine, better than we thought she would be. We have a lovely lunch nut roast and home grown vegetables. We chatter on and moan about the government and the banks. The house is the same, though Tessa the cat declines to join us, preferring to sleep in the hay, she is an excellent mouser. Soon, too soon it is time to go home. I hate driving in the dark, and we set off through the rain home.
The cats are all pleased to see us, this may or may not be connected to the fact that though the cat bowl was full when we left it is empty now. There are feathers everywhere some unlucky pigeon has been caught. I wonder which it was they all look equally innocent and sleepy, Fluff perhaps though she is my most beloved of the cats, I know her little ways.

I got a comment in the Times: I was in response to the dreadful poisoning of cats:

Poisoning cats is not the stuff of humour
I am really not too sure how tongue-in-cheek Rod Liddle’s “Antifreeze — cool for cats” (Comment, last week) was meant to be but it did not make me laugh (he does, however, generally raise a smile). Several years ago, in my capacity as a magistrate, I sat on the case of a local man who had killed more than 20 cats by giving them antifreeze. We were told by an expert witness — that is, a vet — of the slow and agonising death the cats would have suffered. Evidently cats cannot resist the sweetness of antifreeze and, while I do appreciate the problem of cats’ toilet habits, there are other, rather less drastic, methods of keeping them away.
Victoria Toone
Nuneaton, Warwickshire

john Blakey wrote:
Though I dislike them intensely I too think it is wrong to put down poisoned saucers of £50 notes for MPs and bankers. Though the slow and agonizing death may be justified. MPs and bankers just can’t resist the sweetness of someone else’s £50 notes. There are however less drastic methods of keeping them away.

stanley cohen wrote:
In principle I agree with Mr Blakey with the proviso that only fivers be employed.

Postcards

The Three Cliffs, Three Cliffs Bay, Gower, Wales
http://www.flickr.com/photos/emperordalek/4085615608/

Rouen Le Port, Normandie, France
http://www.flickr.com/photos/emperordalek/4085616278/

Felixstowe, Suffolk, England
http://www.flickr.com/photos/emperordalek/4085617344/

Caister-on-Sea, Bedford, England
http://www.flickr.com/photos/emperordalek/4084860973/

Budapest, Hungry
http://www.flickr.com/photos/emperordalek/4084861935/

Obituary: Tom Blumenau: businessman and human rights campaigner

Tom Blumenau campaigned for tolerance and social justice, bringing his skills in business management to support and develop influential organisations in the field of individual rights.
Born in 1927 to a Jewish family in Cologne, Blumenau was to witness in early childhood the mounting intolerance that led to the Holocaust. It bred in him a passion for human rights and respect for others.
By 1937 the family had left Germany to settle in London, where Blumenau was enrolled at St Paul’s school as his father strove to re-establish the clothing company, founded by his own father in 1887. Initially based in Islington and as a supplier of underwear to the women in Britain’s armed forces, the shadow of the Blitz forced relocation to Shropshire in 1941.
Tom joined the company, Silhouette, on leaving school and shortly afterwards was sent to the United States to study the latest developments in marketing and merchandising. In postwar Britain, as austerity became a memory and women sought out style and glamour once more, the company’s innovations in foundationwear and subsequently swimwear found ready acceptance.
The factory in Shrewsbury had been joined by others at Market Drayton, Whitchurch, Wem and the new town of Telford and at the peak had more than 3,500 workers. “It was a very happy place and the working conditions were excellent,” says an employee of the time. Blumenau’s flair for marketing and persuasive advertising gave the company steady growth and in due time he became managing director and chairman of what had become a substantial business.
In March 1959 it became a public company, quoted on the London Stock Exchange. Although the company had long since passed into new ownership, he was delighted recently to be asked as guest of honour to a theatrical production at the Theatre Severn, Shrewsbury, charting the relationship the company had with the town where its largest factory was once sited.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article6908680.ece

Letters:

Guardian

Contrary to Emma Thompson’s scandalous association between Exeter and the BNP (BNP would love it here, actor tells students, 7 November), we know that the university is not racist. Not only is Exeter an especially welcoming place, but why should we feel guilty for belonging to a community perhaps more representative of the country at large than metropolitan London? Not only does the university have an exceptionally diverse student body, with students from over 120 countries, but to actively criticise it for its “whiteness” is ignorant of its location and offensive to its population. Diversity and integration are not numbers games based on arbitrary quotas.
Many students struggle to adapt to university life, but more often than not it is your perspective that has to change. It’s just not credible for Tindyebwa Agaba and his adoptive mother to associate the Exeter student body with neo-fascist views at a time when fear of a resurgent BNP is so heightened. Offence is an unwelcome fact of life – that is not what we object to. What is so objectionable is the pure irresponsibility of her comments. Even with the right intentions, is one celebrity’s soundbite worth the livelihoods and self-respect of an entire city?
Thompson should consider spending more than an afternoon photo shoot in Exeter before casting such offensive assertions. Perhaps she could take such an opportunity to apologise.
Jonathan Beddall
President, University of Exeter Politics Society
• Your story led me to reread your comprehensive report on why black and ethnic minority students get lower degree grades (Report, Education, 27 October). The Equality Challenge Unit (on whose board I used to sit) quite rightly stated “universities and colleges need to focus on whether their policies and practices are actually widening the gap or are effectively narrowing it … institutions need to reflect on whether their curricula, assessment methods, support services and even the extra-curricular activities they support are genuinely inclusive and fair.”
They went on to conclude: “We are concerned that mainstream academics in many areas aren’t having these conversations, and that complacency around race equality could lead to the attainment gap growing even wider in future years.”
I agree. Unfortunately the lethal combination of race and class equally affects the career prospects of black academics, very few of whom hold senior academic management positions in higher education. Until that issue is addressed and there are role models, especially in Russell Group institutions, black and working class students will do well to even stand still compared to other students, never mind close the gap.
Roger Kline

Timothy Garton Ash covers a broad canvas of post-1989 issues (Comment, 5 November), but the key failure was to leave Mikhail Gorbachev without economic support at the crucial moment.
In 1989, unlike in 1945, the west lacked a George Marshall with a plan to pay for transition and stability in Europe. The Soviet Union imploded dramatically, rather than by stages, the Russian people found themselves at the mercy of the oligarchs and the mafia, and soon came to blame Gorbachev for all their ills. As George Soros agrees, the rouble should have been underpinned and guaranteed, not just to prevent severe hardship for former Soviet citizens but also to ensure the early erosion of east-west barriers.
Helmut Kohl shrewdly saw the political need to exchange the East German mark at parity with its West German counterpart, even though it was probably worth only a quarter of that figure. For years the West Germans paid a substantial extra tax to pay for a much smoother integration than would otherwise have been possible. It’s “the vision thing” and, on the broader scene, it was seriously lacking 20 years ago.
Michael Meadowcroft
Leeds 
•  Timothy Garton Ash properly stresses the importance of the mass social movements that swept eastern Europe 20 years ago, toppling the Stalinist bureaucracies that had seemed impregnable. Yet his characterisation of China as “a hybrid that can crudely be summarised as Leninist capitalism – something we simply did not imagine in 1989″ misses the mark on two counts. First, the Maoist project, although wrapped in Marxist rhetoric, was always essentially nationalistic. Writing in 1940, Mao made it clear that in the coming revolution socialism was not on the immediate agenda, and that the “objective mission … [was] to clear the path for the development of capitalism”. The methods used borrowed not from Lenin, but from Stalin – top-down centralised planning implemented through a series of five-year plans, heavy industry prioritised over light industry and over agricultural development etc.
Second, this type of state capitalism, far from being an exotic hybrid, was actually one of the most significant developments of the 20th century – the emergence of big, state-owned economic sectors. The state came to plan the whole of internal production in Germany in the latter part of the first world war, in the US and Britain as well as Germany throughout most of the second world war, and in the USSR from Stalin to Gorbachev as well as in China under Mao. “Something we simply did not imagine in 1989″? Well, actually, Tony Cliff, the founder of the Socialist Review Group (the precursor of the Socialist Workers party) imagined it in general terms in a book that he wrote as far back as 1947.
Tim Evans
Swansea
• Today, 9 November, the world will rejoice at the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. President Reagan was right to demand of the Soviets, “tear down this wall”. But today, a wall – in places twice as high and over twice as long – snakes through the Israeli-occupied West Bank. It too divides families and it too has become a prison wall; this time for the Palestinian people. Surely, it’s time for the US to demand: “Mr Netanyahu, tear down this wall.”
Dr Stephen Leah
York
•  At 1,553 miles long, the wall that divides Western Sahara is 12 times longer than the Berlin Wall and, having stood for 29 years, is now a year older than the Berlin Wall was when it was toppled. Yesterday, Saharawi’s marked the 34th anniversary of the Green March, the mass occupation by Moroccans of Western Sahara in breach of international law. The wall was built some years later to keep the 165,000 Saharawi refugees from returning to their land. Like the Berlin Wall, the Western Saharan wall has divided families for a generation and has become a potent symbol of injustice and an ongoing focus for protest.
Stefan Simanowitz
Chair, Free Western Sahara Network

Jack Schofield is wrong to suggest “the global industry is heading for chaos due to the range of digital formats being adopted” (Why radio’s grand plan has me tuning out, 2 November). Last year’s international agreement on common receiver profiles means DAB, DAB+ and DMB are compatible not competing standards. IP is an important complement to broadcast technologies, but unsuitable as a primary platform, not least because it is not mobile and cannot support nearly enough simultaneous listening. Whilst the target date of 2015 for upgrade may be ambitious, the criteria are achievable. The alternative condemns the industry to an indefinite period of unaffordable dual transmission.
Mark Friend controller, Multiplatform & Interactive, BBC Audio & Music
Another BBC mini-me
While I am sure everyone likes the idea of the BBC finally coming around and putting more serious political coverage out there , I think Democracy Live is a bad idea (Highly debatable, 2 November). The BBC has already been told it should not use its position as a state-funded behemoth to crowd out private firms. Won’t this new website really hurt the Guardian’s CiF, Open Democracy, Total Politics, PoliticsHome, They Work for You, etc.? It strikes me mostly as typical BBC mini-me, copycat actions that will only harm these other initiatives.
HeyPeople online
Mr and Mrs Dales’ diary
Well said, Mr Wainwright (Earthquake in the Dales, 2 November). However, given the reputation we dalesmen have for stubborn independence, a healthy suspicion of fashion, and an avoidance of change for change’s sake, I remain to be convinced that doing away with the “Parish Noticeboard” front page of the Craven Herald & Pioneer is going to improve our paper.
I can see the appeal in moving away from the arm-stretching broadsheet format, but do the readers of local newspapers buy them because of the headline or picture on the front page? I think mostly not. For years before the internet was dreamed of, readers of the Craven Herald have known exactly where to look to see what’s coming up – the front page. It still works – why change it?
Nobbutmiddlin online
Footlights to spotlight
“[Peter] Fincham is not a product of the TV channel conveyor belt” (Will he or won’t he?, 2 November). Oh come off it: “Fincham studied music at Churchill College, Cambridge. He joined the Cambridge Footlights production team as musical director, alongside a committee which included Griff Rhys Jones, Jimmy Mulville, Rory McGrath and Clive Anderson.”
pancakemix online

Ex-chiefs of staff, Generals Guthrie and Dannatt, have criticised Gordon Brown for providing inadequate resources and poor leadership in Afghanistan (Reports, 7 November). Dannatt is about to write his memoirs to be entitled Leading From the Front. But have Guthrie and Dannatt questioned why so few senior army officers are serving in Afghanistan? Out of 248 senior officers (59 generals and 189 brigadiers), only seven were in Afghanistan at the end of October, according to the Army Personnel Centre. If Afghanistan is the most serious military conflict of our times, why aren’t more of our senior officers committed to leading from the front, when so many less-rewarded junior ranks are facing death, injury and hardship? Perhaps Dannatt should amend the title of his memoirs.
Michael Leslie
Bingley, West Yorkshire

Article history
As a parent with two children at Oxford School, one of the two schools the United Learning Trust is proposing to replace with an academy in September 2010, it was with dismay that I read your article about the ULT’s failings with its existing academies (No more academies until standards rise, sponsor told, 6 November).
My concern was heightened by the impression conveyed by your article that the decision to allow the ULT to take over Oxford School has already been taken. Your readers need to be aware that, despite promises that parents would be consulted over the proposal, consultation has not yet taken place. Parents were first made aware of the ULT’s plans in July.
There has since been a vocal local campaign in opposition to the proposal, culminating in the resignation of nearly half the school governing body. Issues raised are not limited to the known problems of the ULT with some of its existing academies. There is also concern that the proposal would deprive parents in much of east Oxford of the option of a non-faith state secondary school and that the ULT’s proposal is for a academy for children aged 3-19 (surely an innovation too far if the trust has yet to prove its credentials for the 11-19 age group). These concerns deserve careful consideration by the secretary of state.
I sincerely hope we will not be subjected to a sham consultation on a fait accompli. It is to be hoped that Ed Balls will treat the views of parents of children at Oxford School with more respect than that shown by his colleague in the Home Office for the views of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs.
Iain McLaren

David Blunkett makes a mistake to benchmark MPs’ work and status against senior civil servants (Kelly simply doesn’t get it, 5 November). Until a rigorous job evaluation is done such comparisons lack any validity and merely represent an aspiration (if not an early self-interested bid) in forthcoming discussions about MPs’ salaries and pensions. Blunkett’s points about the demands of working with constant travel, late nights and at weekends will be recognised by many readers as part of their own chosen occupations. He needs to be careful that special pleading based on these factors doesn’t alienate large sections of the population rather than evoke their sympathy.
Gus Pennington
Faceby, North Yorkshire
• It is quite disgraceful that in refusing a debate, Harriet Harman, backed by party leaders, is trying to prevent us, the electors, from finding out what our MPs think and voting accordingly; and from being consulted, as the law requires. Ian Kennedy is required by law under the new act to consult everybody, and the first steps must be detailed debates in both houses. All of us who help the disabled and the disadvantaged will be horrified by parts of the Kelly report which, as Austin Mitchell MP says, reduces MPs to nonentities. It is an attack on the most vulnerable members of society because much of an MP’s work is speaking for them. Here in Hastings the loss of the services of Rosemary Foster, the MP’s wife, would be a major blow. This seems to be true of over a quarter of the constituencies. Thank heavens Ian Kennedy seems to realise these points.
Derek Cole
St Leonards on Sea, East Sussex

You published an article by ex-minister Kim Howells (Comment, 4 November) calling for “necessarily intrusive” surveillance of Muslim communities in Britain because of the al-Qaida threat. The day after you reported that Irish Republican “dissidents” are committed to carrying out terrorist attacks in mainland Britain (Report, 5 November). Will Howells now call for “necessarily intrusive” surveillance of Irish people in Britain?
John Wilson
London
•  The Leeds refuse collection dispute has attracted little national interest, though it has left much of Leeds strewn with bags of decaying rubbish. But it is doubtless a harbinger of troubles to come right across Britain, as the next – presumably Tory – government slashes public spending and seeks to make the worst-paid bear the most pain. Cllr Brett is a Liberal Democrat (Letters, 4 November), part of a coalition with the Tories. Can we expect Lib Dems elsewhere to gang up with the Tories to take on the unions?
Kenneth Powell
Leeds
• So Simon Mann wants Mark Thatcher to face justice (Report, 4 November). He’s not the only one!
Les Hearn
London
• Aucklanders may have termed X-crossings barn dances (In praise of …, 3 November), but the New Zealand original was installed in Dunedin over 50 years ago and named after the then mayor, Jim Barnes. And Belfast has had at least one for ages.
HM Bracefield
Newtown Abbey, Co Antrim
• Henry Barnes may well have popularised barn dances in the late 1940s (Letters, 6 November) but the description was in use much earlier. In 1924 the Chicago radio station WLS began broadcasting a regular programme called National Barn Dance. This suggests that the phrase was in use long before that date.
James Hayes
Twickenham, Middlesex
• Put another way (Remembrance Day. Goodbye to all that, 7 November). Why, as a nation, are we so brilliant at remembering but so hopeless at learning?
David J Handley

Independent:

The Royal College of Physicians is right to propose a three-way mandated choice for organ donation. The growing shortfall of organs for transplant imposes on us a moral obligation to consider new ways to increase the number of donors.
Not only is the current opt-in system failing to meet demand, it cannot guarantee that an individual’s wishes will be carried out. The decision is often left to family members who may not know what their relative would have wanted; and, at the other extreme, 10 per cent of registered donors still have their wishes vetoed by their family when they die.
The British Medical Association favours presumed consent, but this assumes that the lack of a registered objection signifies a willingness to donate, when it could easily be the result of ignorance of the opt-out system, simple inertia, or an unwillingness to contemplate death and organ donation.
Mandated choice requires you to state a preference in advance, thereby maximising the chances of your wishes being fulfilled. Your family cannot override your decision unless you opt for them to have the final say, in which case they would know that you weren’t actively opposed to organ donation; if you had been, you would have ticked “No”.
This should both increase donation rates and reduce the risk of families worrying that they are donating a relative’s organs when that is not what he or she would have wanted.
If the current advertising campaign does not recruit enough donors to fill the shortfall then we should examine other systems; but we cannot presume to know what people want done with their organs unless we ask them.
Dr Hugo Wellesley
Great Ormond street Hospital London WC1
As one of 7,000 people in the UK awaiting a kidney transplant I was delighted by your prominent call to arms over the issue of organ donation (4 November).
My hopes were raised with the discussion, a year ago, about whether our country should switch to presumed consent. At the time I wrote to many public figures and received encouraging responses from the Prime Minister and my Labour MP. A spokesman for David Cameron accepted that presumed consent had proved to be a significant success in Spain but inexplicably said that Cameron could not support the change. The Organ Donation Taskforce then came down against presumed consent.
The waiting list grows ever longer. Something has to change. I am grateful that you have taken a lead in starting a debate.
Carol Gould
Bristol
Losing faith in the Afghan campaign
I joined the remembrance ceremony at our local war memorial, but the Government should not take high attendances at memorial events as signifying support for the current war in Afghanistan.
I attended primarily out of respect for those who gave their lives to protect this country from invasion in the war against fascism. But I also attended out of respect for those who are currently being sacrificed on the altar of the vanity of our politicians who cannot admit that they have got it wrong in Afghanistan.
In the past fortnight the futility of the campaign in Afghanistan has been brought into sharper focus, by a succession of traumatic events:
The failure of the “Panther’s Claw” troop surge to secure a free and fair first round in the presidential election has been compounded by the cancellation of the second round.
The murder of five soldiers by one of the policemen they were training demonstrates that it is almost impossible to prevent the Taliban infiltrating the Afghan security forces.
The murder, in the United States, of 12 military personnel and a civilian by a Muslim major, opposed to the war in Afghanistan.
Increasingly audacious terrorist attacks against military bases in the heart of Pakistan, by al-Qa’ida and the Taliban, some of whom may have been driven out of Afghanistan into Pakistan by the war.
There are few Afghans in Britain, but hundreds of thousands of Pakistanis. Increasing militancy in Pakistan is likely to have an impact on Pakistani communities in the UK. Far from reducing the risk of terrorism in this country, the consequence of the “war against terror” in Iraq, Afghanistan and now Pakistan is likely to be the exact opposite.
Julius Marstrand
Cheltenham
General Lord Guthrie is right to point out the startling lacuna in Gordon Brown’s speech on the British presence in Afghanistan. The Prime Minister claims it is vital to the United Kingdom for British forces to be fighting there, yet he shows no sign of adopting the necessary war measures to prepare the nation for the task he envisages.
Clearly Nato is an unreliable alliance and – Canada, Denmark and the United States apart – its members neither share Mr Brown’s apocalyptic vision of the threat, nor are they prepared to commit fighting troops to combat it. Why is he right and they wrong?
Only by a convincing, forensic analysis of the facts can the case be made to a sceptical British public – or possibly not. Former FCO minister Kim Howells recently argued compellingly for a fundamental strategic reassessment of the case for the UK’s – and Nato’s – campaign in Afghanistan and urged for the focus to be on on UK border and internal defensive measures.
Mr Brown’s argument that simply cannot be sustained is: we carry on because we’re there; we’ve been there a long time, we have suffered casualties and therefore we can’t quit now. That is not strategy.
William Pender
Lieutenant Colonel (Rtd)
Salisbury
The Tory history of Europe
The apparently “new” position on Europe outlined by David Cameron is yet more evidence of Tory inconsistency. Perhaps they need a history lesson.
This is the party that took Britain in the European Economic Community; the party that campaigned for a yes vote in the 1975 referendum; they signed up to the Single European Act that created the political dimensions of the EU; and, biggest of all, they gave us Maastricht in 1992 – without ven considering a referendum.
It’s the Conservatives (not Labour or anyone else) who since the very beginning of Britain’s involvement in the European project, made Britain part of it, shifting more and more sovereignty to the European level. For David Cameron to ask for a referendum on Lisbon while trying to keep a straight face would be laughable.
Lisbon is a tidying-up exercise, almost insignificant in comparison to Maastricht, which created the European symbols including the flag and anthem, and strengthened qualified majority voting, making it more difficult to veto decisions. It’s the Conservatives that gave Britain the political Europe that they constantly condemn. And it’s incredible how they somehow brush it off as if it were someone else’s creation.
Toni Giugliano
Edinburgh
The values millions died to defend
We have been involved in our annual weekend of national remembrance for millions of our young who gave their lives in war to protect the freedom and British way of life we live and breathe by.
They died for all the benefits of the precious lifestyle we enjoy. It must not be undermined by the culture of greed, which many in high places live by and try to excuse. They are in contempt of these precious values.
George Appleby
York
Mary Wakefield chose the day before Remembrance Sunday to display publicly her ignorance of those who fought and died in the Second World War (“Why all the fuss to install Park on the plinth”, 7 November).
Why boast of never having heard of Keith Park, when reference to any war history would have alleviated her complacent lack of readily available knowledge. She aims her jibes at a man whose name many of those who marched on Sunday will remember with huge respect.
Mary Harris
London W11
Some cyclists are hard to avoid
I am pleased that David Prosser (“Motorists are just too lazy, selfish and reckless”, 6 November) has recovered from his accident after a motorist knocked him off his bike, but it is grossly unfair to blame motorists for most accidents.
Around where I live there seems to be an outbreak of cyclists with a death wish. In the last week I have had two near-misses with cyclists cycling on busy roads after dark with no lights on their bikes, wearing dark clothing without a single patch of reflective material, and neither was wearing a helmet. They were not children or teenagers, but middle-aged adults who should have known better.
I am sure that there are plenty of careless motorists, but there are also many cyclists who are just as stupid and reckless.
Heather Smith
Bishop Auckland, Co Durham
However depressing the statistics of cyclists injured or killed in accidents, the conclusion is not to get off your bike but to get on it.
The number of cyclists in this country is still so small that drivers do not look out for us. Only by increasing our numbers can we raise the awareness of the motorists. On the Continent you do not do a left-hand turn (or rather for them it is a right-hand one) without looking over your shoulder to check for cyclists. Does anyone do it here? All driving instruction courses should include a session or two on a bike. Drivers must be taught to keep a safe distance when overtaking or approaching a cyclist – and cyclists need to be educated that the Highway Code applies to them too.
Soren Upton Sjolin
Bury ST Edmunds, Suffolk
This ‘joke’ was just not funny
Ian Burrell asks, “When is a joke not a joke?” (7 November). The answer should be obvious. A joke is often an exaggerated description of human behaviour told in a manner that people find funny because they see themselves. Excellent comedians (Jack Dee and Paul Merton, for example), can tell a story this way, whereas puerile individuals such as Frankie Boyle and David Walliams believe humour is using bad language and being offensive.
How they cannot see that Frankie Boyle’s remarks about Rebecca Adlington were grossly offensive, beggars belief. If the choice is watching Rebecca swimming for gold or watching so-called comedians using bad language, then I am afraid we have a no-brainer.
Malcolm Howard
Banstead, Surrey
Sci-fi mystery
Unlike the writers of some of the letters you have published following the naming of Wayne Rooney’s son, I don’t know what Kai means. You’ll probably have to ask Lex Gigeroff, who created the show, but Kai (the Dead Man) was a former assassin for His Divine Shadow, and the Last of the Brunnen G in the sci-fi series Lexx.
Dave MacKenzie
CHESTER
Non-speaking part
Recent correspondence about the casting of The Archers reminds me that in the days when Jim could fix it, I asked him to get me the part of Higgs, Jack Woolley’s chauffeur, a man who had never uttered a word on air. I was hoping to provide a simple grunt in response to one of Jack’s orders, but, alas, it was not to be, and I missed my chance to be part of the Archers’ archive.
Richard Welch
Nantglyn, North Wales
Long way away
One of the frustrations that we provincial folk have with the London-based media is your lack of geographical knowledge outside the Home Counties. Your otherwise excellent piece on Mike Tyson’s bizarre UK tour (7 November) was ruined by the assertion that Merthyr Tydfil and Bloxwich were “a short trip” from each other. One is in South Wales. The other is in the West Midlands. I’m pretty certain that you would not have described, say, Eastbourne and Watford in similar terms.
Mark Sawbridge
Wolverhampton
Cheerful tricks
The trick-or-treaters that came to my door at 9.30pm were “guised” in hoodies and were upwards of 11 years old (letter, 6 November). But, to my delight, when I returned with the sweets they were doing a rather good dance routine without any prompt from me. They were charming and well-mannered too. They may not have made me laugh – but they chased the Devil away alright.
Steven Rhodes
London SE11
Royal command
Further to Andrew Johnson’s letter (6 November) and Brian Viner’s digression concerning strange objects found in the rectum, I see a disturbing trend emerging featuring souvenirs from British seaside towns. If this is the best that one can hope to take home from a trip to a coastal resort then I am minded to follow the late King George V’s advice: “Bugger Bognor!”
John Schluter
Guildford, Surrey

Times:

Sir, There is cross-party consensus about the need to get more women into the House of Commons, and to encourage women with young families to stand for Parliament. As serving MPs, we are concerned that aspects of Sir Christopher Kelly’s proposals will discourage women who might otherwise seek their party’s nomination, as well as exposing existing MPs to unnecessary risk.
The Kelly report does not address the fact that MPs are, in effect, shift workers. On Mondays and Tuesdays, we are expected to remain at the House of Commons for 10pm votes. The voting process is slow, and means that we are often unable to leave Westminster until 10.45pm. Under Kelly’s proposed regime, MPs whose constituencies are within an hour’s train journey of London will receive no financial assistance to rent accommodation and will have to return home each evening.
Trains are slower and less frequent at night, and some MPs will not be able to reach their home stations until after midnight. In some cases, they will have to alight at unstaffed stations and walk to their cars through car parks or wait for taxis. The risk of mugging or sexual assault is obvious, and is likely to deter women who currently have jobs where the safety of employees is treated with the seriousness it deserves. We cannot believe that Sir Christopher Kelly seriously intends that his proposals should put female MPs at unnecessary risk, but in the light of his report we call on the leaders of our parties to reaffirm their commitment to making Parliament a friendlier place for women. We also call on the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority to ensure that the safety of current and future MPs is a guiding principle in its deliberations.
Claire Curtis-Thomas, MP, Kali Mountford, MP, Jacqui Lait, MP, Eleanor Laing, MP, Phyllis Starkey, MP
House of Commons, SW1
Sir, Even given the better quality standard of MP to which Sir John Baker, (letter, Nov 6) refers, I am not sure they deserve to be measured against doctors and headteachers for their salaries. Both of these put in years of study and financial sacrifice to obtain academic and professional qualifications needed for their chosen careers. A newly elected MP can achieve with no qualifications and little or no experience.
One could argue the only qualities an MP requires is a thick skin, party loyalty and the gift of the gab.
Reg Kemp March, Cambs

Sir, Today the Government looks set to ask the Commons to repeal an important protection for free speech. It was inserted by the Lords into the new homophobic hatred offence in May 2008 and, after twice trying and failing to remove this free speech protection, the Government reluctantly accepted the position and allowed it to go on the statute book. But then, in a move for which there seems to be no precedent, it introduced a clause in another Bill in the very next session to repeal what they had enacted. The repealing clause came before the Lords in July and the House rejected the measure by a large majority.
The free speech clause is supported across the political spectrum. Liberty, the Church of England, Matthew Parris and Rowan Atkinson have also joined the ranks of those who back it. It says: “For the avoidance of doubt, the discussion or criticism of sexual conduct or practices or the urging of persons to refrain from or modify such conduct or practices shall not be taken of itself to be threatening or intended to stir up hatred.”
Some might say it is so moderate that it merely states the obvious and is therefore unnecessary. But those who say that are closing their eyes to what is happening. Police officers, pressurised by diversity training and furnished with guidance from the Home Office and the Crown Prosecution Service, seem to feel duty bound to come down like a ton of bricks on people who express disagreement with the behaviour of some gay rights activists, and members of the public are left feeling harassed and frightened. The recent case of the Christian grandmother interrogated in her living room about a letter she wrote to her local council is just the latest example. The politically motivated trampling of free speech is something that should concern us all. It is the duty of Parliament to try to prevent this from continuing to happen.
Lord Waddington
David Taylor, MP
Westminster, SW1

Sir, Professor Anthony Glees (letter, Oct 30) makes three basic points about Professor Christopher Andrew’s history of MI5: that evidence has been destroyed to distort the record if only by silence; that Andrew does not address important operations that are not in the existing files, and that he soft-pedals the post-1945 Soviet Intelligence and subversion offensive.
Of course, the body of evidence has been sculpted. MI5 must have had millions of files, not just the existing 400,000. There are, we should be aware, official files not about Intelligence that are literally hundreds of years old (eg, about Ireland, and Napoleon) still not public. Few evidential records are complete. Andrew makes clear that his work is based on official evidence. But this has not restrained his judgments. He has obviously been concerned to bring to light as much as possible while memories and people are still alive, offering up his account to the broadest possible amendment.
Evidence is also maintained to sculpt the record, too: even complete files can mislead. Sculpting information is a prerogative of whoever owns it, in this case the darkest workings of our government. It is to the credit of MI5 that the best evidential history that could be produced clearly has been by Andrew. And it obviously took courage for Andrew to undertake his task.
An authorised history is not an unauthorised history. Andrew makes this plain and clear. To criticise him for writing an authorised account is beside the point. His book, The Defence of the Realm: The Authorised History of MI5, is infused with the German, Soviet, Irish and terrorist threats that have been of principal concern. He faced a ruthless and historically self-authorised organisation and it is extraordinarily to his credit — and theirs — that he has brought so much out.
In any democracy people demand to know what is done in their name. Andrew has done us great service by telling us all he can from the MI5 record that is available. It is clear that he has not written to please.
John Ranelagh
Grantchester, Cambs

Sir, So the European Court of Human Rights has ruled that to display crucifixes in Italian schools “violates religious freedom” (report, Nov 4). So to offer only, say, soccer and rugby in such schools must violate sports freedom, and for British shops to assault us with ceaseless pop music offends our music freedom. But unless there is something to be free from, the notion is meaningless. Christianity has been Italy’s religion for two millennia; if Italian children are never taught even that, their religious “freedom” will be freedom to move in a metaphysical void — which indeed seems where we are all heading, under such increasingly censorious rulings.
John Powell Ward
Horton Kirby, Ken

Sir, I do not think it is reasonable for Radovan Karadzic to waste more public funds on this legal case (“Karadzic wins extra time for war crimes trial fight”, report, Nov 6, and letter, Nov 7) when he has had nearly a year to prepare. He should be given an extension only if he is prepared to fund the massive cost of the delay. If not, then the trial goes ahead in his absence after two requests for his attendance.
Annie Campbell

Sir, Mandatory sex lessons for every 15-year-old (report , Nov 6) is an encroachment on the personal liberties of parents. It is risible to suggest that under-age single mothers who have experienced sex need any lessons whatsoever in such matters. Schools would do better to concentrate on imparting the “three Rs”, on which knowledge of other subjects can be built. Allied to a return of proper school discipline, this would give disaffected youth a sense of self-worth and achievement which at present they seem able to find only in the production of illegitimate offspring that they can neither support nor nurture. It’s time that the woolly liberal attitudes from which the present dysfunctional education structure has arisen, and which blurs the distinction between right and wrong, was consigned to the scrapheap.
Laurence Factor
Stanmore, Middlesex
Sir, Let us hope that the latest trend in sex tuition is a temporary blip until the children are parents and can pass on the relevant information. In my younger days I was one of a team giving factual sex education to parents and children together at their own request. This proved very successful and helped to close the generation gap. Only the parents and close adults really know when is the best time to impart this information. To suggest that 15 is a suitable age when children are in the midst of hormone turbulence is quite wrong. Giving preparatory human development information to children aged 8 or 9 would be far more sensible. As one of the boys in such classes was overheard saying to another: “I didn’t know you were so wonderful inside. I thought you were just someone to bash up.”
Frances Hancock
Lymm, Cheshire

Telegraph:

SIR – How right Charles Moore is (Comment, November 7). As a former soldier now working in Kabul as a security consultant, with Afghans as well as expats, I know that following a setback, it is generally felt by those in theatre that one must simply press on.
This is an arena for big boys, not the boy scouts. When a frightful incident occurs, and the cry goes up in the homeland for withdrawal, all it shows to the loathsome Taliban – and every other Afghan national – is the gutlessness of Western democracies with their craving for a quick-fix solution.
Thus we leave ourselves open to abuse, contempt and defeat. I am appalled by the lack of resolution by Gordon Brown and Barack Obama, two of the West’s most powerful leaders. They should both get a grip – and fast.
James Mayo
Kabul, Afghanistan
SIR – When senior officers asked for a further 2,000 troops in Afghanistan, Gordon Brown promised 500. When more helicopters were needed, Mr Brown denied that troops were dying through their absence. When replacements for the Snatch Land Rovers were required, and troops wrote home complaining of a lack of even the most basic necessities, Mr Brown insisted that our forces were getting everything they needed.
Now Mr Brown, who expected the taxpayer to bankroll his Sky Sports subscription, and who has been in office during the most far-reaching financial scandal in British political history, requires the Afghan government to clean up its act, and demands that the British people support the Afghan war (report, November 7).
Could he not have set a better example?
Colin Macdonald
Nottingham
SIR – For the past thousand years, no foreign army has entered Afghanistan and left victorious.
Yesterday, when we remembered, among others, the recent dead, who died with their boots on, mostly paid for by themselves, we should never forget them, nor should we ever forgive or forget the politicians who sent them there.
Eric Vaughan
Willoughby, Lincolnshire
SIR – As the headmaster of a school with past pupils and present parents serving in Afghanistan, I should like to pay tribute to our Armed Forces. They do a wonderful job and make me proud to be British.
Last week I had the honour of meeting three old boys who are serving officers. All have seen action in Iraq
and Afghanistan. They spoke in measured tones with self-deprecation and humour.
As long as our country can produce such men and women, we have a chance.
Clive Dytor
The Oratory School
Woodcote, Berkshire
Cameron’s EU allies
SIR – Many people in the Jewish community have noted with concern the recent attacks on David Cameron’s allies in eastern Europe. In particular, Michal Kaminski, the leader of the European Conservative and Reformists group in the European Parliament, and the LNNK party of Latvia have been accused of anti-Semitism and neo-Nazism by opponents of the Conservative Party.
It has become increasingly obvious that these accusations are unfair, baseless and politically motivated. The Chief Rabbi of Poland has now spoken up on behalf of Michal Kaminski and has made it clear that far from being an anti-Semite, Mr Kaminski is an outspoken opponent of anti-Semitism and a friend of Israel.
The Latvian Foreign Minister has publicly criticised attacks on the LNNK and stated that “none of the ruling parties in Latvia has ever glorified Nazism”.
Anger has been expressed at the highest levels in both Poland and Latvia at what are seen as smears on respectable, mainstream politicians.
Anti-Semitism is far too grave a charge to be used as a political football. We call upon those responsible for making unsubstantiated allegations to withdraw them.
Lord Young of Graffham
Flo Kaufmann
Chairman, European Jewish Congress
Howard Leigh
Chairman, Westminster Synagogue
Benjamin Perl
Chairman, Huntingdon Foundation
Joshua Rowe
David Lewis
Peter Leach
David Chenkin
Martin Green
Marilyn Ofer
Naomi Hass Perlman
Yvonne Sherrington
Henry Davis
Alan Mendoza
Richard Bernstone
Ashley Krais
Jon Cohen
Alan Jacobs
Louise Jacobs
Nicole Debson
Spencer Debson
Ivan Sopher
Louis Cohen
Caronne Graham
Stephen Massey
Richard Harrington
Roving reporters
SIR – I am greatly reassured that others also find the unnecessary and often ill-timed practice of hand-waving by newsreaders objectionable (Letters, November 5).
Can the BBC and others please discourage their presenters from this distracting practice, and also ask them to sit down and stop roving about the studio when giving the news?
David Lindsay
Middleton on Sea, West Sussex
SIR – At last someone has commented on television presenters’ hands. Do they attend a course devoted to hand-flapping? They all seem to perform it with remarkable precision – very reminiscent of performing seals in the circuses of days gone by.
G. Royston
Southampton
Useful leaf-blowers
SIR – Leaf-blowers may be noisy (Letters, November 6), but they do have their uses. I was in the village of Minions, on the edge of the windswept Bodmin Moor, when I heard a leaf-blowing machine at work. There wasn’t a tree in sight. Curious, I rounded a corner to see a resident using the machine to blow sheep dung off his drive.
I bet the manufacturer never envisaged such a use.
Matthew Dale
Restronguet, Cornwall
In stupidity we trust
SIR – Further to your report (November 7) about National Trust taking a light-hearted swipe at health and safety culture, there is a map on the approaches to Lindisfarne Castle – owned by National Trust – which states, with no apparent irony, in the bottom left-hand corner: “Sea – water hazard”.
Richard Yeo
Coldingham, Berwickshire
Voting for Ukip
SIR – Dr Barry Moyse (Letters, November 7) asks how voting for Ukip can help its cause of EU withdrawal if that means blocking a “Eurosceptic” Conservative.
To answer this hoary old Tory gripe, Ukip’s leader has promised for years now not to oppose any sitting MP who signs up to the Better Off Out Campaign. Any MP prepared to incur his leader’s wrath can thereby be spared and earn our support.
Ukip will field up to 500 candidates next year. Many will lose their deposits and few may have any hope of winning in our first-past-the-post system. However, they will give the public their only chance of voting for withdrawal now that David Cameron has abandoned his referendum pledge.
Lisbon has completed our integration into the post-democratic EU single state. Does it matter much which of the main three parties sits in Westminster?
Sir George Earle Bt
Crediton, Devon
SIR – What a pity MPs did not defend this country’s sovereignty with the same rigour that they are defending their expenses.
Bill Gladstone
Solihull, West Midlands
SIR – Charles de Gaulle, one of the founding fathers of the European Community, once asked how it was possible to govern a country with 246 varieties of cheese. He was referring to France alone. How many kinds of cheese are there in the rest of the EU?
Peter Garstin
Dover, Kent
All aboard the love boat
SIR – Never mind missing the bus or the train by seconds being the most annoying thing in the world (Leading article, November 5), can you imagine the frustration of seeing the last ferry from Portsmouth to Gosport slipping its ropes as you sprint down to the water’s edge?
The alternative is an expensive taxi or an eventful journey on the late-night “love boat” – so named by the long-suffering fishermen who provide the service.
Gaby McCall
Gosport, Hampshire
In hot water
SIR – Can anyone explain why the water in most public lavatories is so hot? In the absence of mixer taps, it is often possible to use only the cold water.
Marie Smith
Billington, Lancashire
Bumper stickers for the MPs who still don’t “get it”
SIR – In the light of Professor Sir Ian Kennedy’s close relationship with the Labour hierarchy (report, November 7), and his announcement that he intends to ignore large parts of the findings of Sir Christopher Kelly’s inquiry, is it not time to start a campaign called “They still don’t get it”?
I am writing a letter to my MP headed, “You still don’t get it” and would suggest others do likewise. Perhaps The Daily Telegraph could start issuing bumper stickers.
Richard Sparrow
Maidstone, Kent
SIR – Alastair Campbell chose to phone a friend and to go 50/50. Perhaps it is now time for his party to ask the audience.
Anthony Lord
Thornton-Cleveleys, Lancashire
SIR – I am not sure which is the more worrying: the fact that Alastair Campbell is a close friend of Professor Sir Ian Kennedy, or that neither of them knew that Skylab was American.
To think that the French might have had the capability in 1973 to launch a space station is bad enough, but then to imagine that had they done so, they would have called it “Skylab” shows an alarming level of ignorance.
Edward Johnson
Gaydon, Warwickshire
SIR – Further to the letter from Bryan Enfield (November 6) may I add that the Latin word ipsa, meaning “herself”, was also used by household slaves in Roman times to refer to their mistress – along the lines of “her indoors” or “her upstairs” in modern parlance.
Clearly, this makes Ipsa an entirely appropriate name for the body that will have regulatory powers over MPs.
Roy Batters
Abingdon, Oxfordshire

Irish Times:

Cutting the number of TDs
Madam, – Well done to John McGrath in expressing his concern that politicians share the pain of the economic mess (November 4th), which has been created primarily by the politicians failing to properly regulate the banks.
Having the current number of TDs (166) has not helped to protect the nation. We now should reduce the number of TDs to 83. Straw poll research indicates such a proposal would receive massive support from the public.
The advantages of this change include: 1. Providing true leadership in times when cuts are required everywhere. 2. Reduction of costs. 3. Giving politicians the opportunity to restore some of their damaged credibility with the public. 4. Reducing the number of representatives per head of population closer to international norms. 5. Offering the potential to reform the political system to ensure that TDs only do work of national value (since there would be fewer of them).
Finally, this would be relatively easy to implement, requiring one simple constitutional amendment and a fairly straightforward re-arrangement of constituencies.
The catch: a constitutional amendment can only be put to the people following a Bill passed by the Dáil. Will the turkeys have the moral courage to vote for Christmas? – Yours, etc,
DAVID MacDONALD,
Mount Merrion Avenue,
Blackrock,
Co Dublin.
Keeping within the speed limit
Madam, – John Mullen (November 6th) criticised Sarah Carey (Opinion, November 4th) for her “self-righteous adherence to the speed limit” and failing to let “faster” motorists go by.
Let’s call a spade a spade. For “faster motorists” we should read motorists who gladly flout speed limits without a thought for the safety of others, let alone themselves.
Speeding drivers might “appreciate” slower, compliant drivers letting them go by, but your letter-writer’s sympathies are dreadfully misdirected. The question: do we want a culture of road-safety where aggressive driving is condemned, or do we not?
Adhering to speed limits is an obvious legal duty. But all vehicle users have a duty of care also to treat the limit as a guideline to the maximum speed. Adjusting driving to suit road conditions can often mean having to drive below the limit.
That may be a conceptual step too far for some drivers, but in that case they really should not be licensed to drive. It is astonishing that, after all of the advertising campaigns warning us to slow down, drivers who drive at appropriate speeds can be characterised as somehow being a greater danger.
Apart from being a driver, I am a frequent walker on country roads. I find drivers who slow down and show respect for safety to be in the minority. You often get a real sense of truculence from drivers who are obliged to suffer the dreadful inconvenience of actually coming to a halt when there is an oncoming car, on a narrow stretch of the road. I often wonder whether one must be a walker in order to understand how daunting it can be to have a ton or more of metal hurtling towards you on a country road, prepared to pass with inches to spare, without ever reducing speed.
Although their resources are already stretched too far to cope, there is no question but that enforcement of speed limits is the sole responsibility of the Garda Síochána.
However, to contend law-abiding motorists should pull in to appease aggressive and impatient fellow drivers demonstrates a wilful blindness to where the real problem lies. – Yours, etc,
PETER A O’SULLIVAN ,
Tipper Road,
Naas,
Co Kildare.
Swine flu vaccinations
Madam, – Two weeks ago, having rung my GP to inquire about getting the swine flu vaccine for my 18-month-old son with cystic fibrosis (CF), I was faced with the news we would have to attend one of the HSE clinics.
This left me with shivers down my spine, as first, we would have to enter a hospital/clinic to receive the vaccine and second, we would be faced with unknown factors such as crowds, waiting rooms, etc.
On Monday when I went online to see where we had to go I was very impressed with the fact I could book the clinic online, but worried what lay ahead as we had to attend Naas General Hospital, which I knew nothing about.
On Thursday morning we arrived at our allowed time, and while my mother waited with my son in the car park, I took a deep breath and entered the hospital expecting to be faced with a queue.
Instead I was greeted by a team of highly organised nurses who on hearing my son had CF, told me I would be seen immediately and they had only that morning done a test run in expectation of dealing with cases like ours.
When I say this brought a tear to my eye I am not joking. I have for months now been avoiding crowds, shops and pharmacies etc for fear my son would catch swine flu and here I was almost at the finish line and instead of having yet another battle on my hands – as I had expected – I had people there to hold our hands and tell us everything would be okay.
My son was quickly and efficiently brought down secluded corridors to an isolation area and within five minutes the vaccine had been administered. We waited for 15 minutes to see that he was all right, and every three minutes a friendly faced popped in to see if we were okay. To say we were okay was an understatement: the relief I cannot explain.
I want to thank the HSE and the community nurses that were there for providing the most wonderful service. As a mother who constantly watches the likes of Orla Tinsley campaign for these basic human rights for our children, it was so lovely for once to see things run as they should be, and for that I am truly grateful. – Yours, etc,
RUTH CAHILL,
Newtown Court,
Maynooth,
Kildare.
Community projects under threat?
Madam, – I wish to respond to Thomas Erbsloh’s letter (November 5th) regarding the Government’s two main social inclusion and community development programmes – the Local Development Social Inclusion Programme (LDSIP) and the Community Development Programme (CDP).
My view is that a focused programme with a single integrated delivery structure is needed in order to maximise the impact of the local development programme and the Community Development Programme, which serve disadvantaged communities.
My overall aim is to ensure that, from 2010, having regard to the budgetary position, disadvantaged communities will benefit from a more focused programme with clear objectives, simplified and streamlined delivery structures and better-integrated actions, leading to significant administrative savings.
The department is undertaking a review of the Community Development Programme and will shortly have a full report on the findings and recommendations arising from it. The statement made in the letter to The Irish Times claiming that the majority of CDPs will close as a result of the review process is completely inaccurate.
On the contrary, I would reasonably expect the majority of projects to be deemed viable and that they would move into the new integrated programme. However, some Community Development Programmes are not dependent solely on funding provided by the department and may decide to continue in separate existence, outside of the new integrated programme. The department cannot instruct these companies, or indeed any independent legal entity, to close.
The intention is to preserve elements of best practice from the existing CDP/LDSIP programmes in the redesigned model, to minimise structures and to enhance benefits for individuals and communities through significant administrative and overhead savings.
These developments are taking place at a time of extreme budgetary difficulties, the full extent of which will not be known until budget day. – Yours, etc,
JOHN CURRAN TD,
Minister of State,
Department of Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs,
Mespil Road,
Dublin 4.
Shopping in Dublin city
Madam, – Regarding Kate Holmquist’s reference to “extortionate” prices for car parking in the city centre (Features, November 3rd), I beg to differ.
The current rate for car parking in the Arnotts car park, off O’Connell Street, is €2 for three hours upon presentation of a receipt from Arnotts or Arnotts Project. The rate is €2.80 for every hour thereafter and there is no “end-date” for this tariff. I feel this is a competitive and fair price, not “extortionate”. We are also working closely with the Dublin City Business Association to welcome and encourage customers to shop in the heart of Dublin. – Yours, etc,
DAVID RIDDIFORD CEO,
Arnotts,
Henry Street,
Dublin 1.
Quotas for female politicians
Madam, – I refer to the article regarding Senator Ivana Bacik’s report on candidate quota legislation to bring more women into Irish politics (Home News, November 5th).
May I suggest she do a report on candidate quality legislation instead? – Yours, etc,
PADDY SHORTALL,
The Bottleworks,
Irishtown,
Dublin 4.
Cutting expenses
Madam, – Why don’t our Government Ministers – as a matter of course – stay in Irish Embassies and use embassy transport, when visiting capital cities around the world? Surely this would eliminate the need for the expense of staying in five-star hotels and hiring limos? – Yours, etc,
F SHIELDS,
Blackrock,
Co Dublin.
Redress for Magdalene laundry inmates
Madam, – The Department of Justice’s meeting with survivors of the Magdalene laundries represents a positive first step in the right direction (Home News, November, 5th).
Hopefully this development will lead to further discussions involving church, State and survivor groups, and ultimately to an apology and forms of redress and compensation for all survivors and family members.
The Department of Justice stands at the centre of the State’s complicity in “referring individuals to the Magdalene laundries”. For much of the last century the judicial system used “Religious Homes”, including Magdalene laundries, as places of remand, probation and imprisonment for women and young girls. The courts referred young women to these “Homes” because the State refused to make available a borstal institution for young female offenders, despite recommendations to do so (eg, in the so-called Carrigan Report, 1931).
The Department of Justice was aware that the use of these institutions in this manner had no basis in law. The Cussen Report (1936), the State’s first study of the industrial and reformatory schools system, reveals that judges were “reluctant” to send young women and first offenders to the women’s prisons. They overcame this difficulty by sending them to “a home conducted by a religious order” provided the “girl” consented to go there and the home agreed to accept her. The report states that there was no statutory basis for this arrangement.
In 1942, the Department of Justice drafted legislation, The Criminal Justice (Female Offenders) Bill, to provide legal sanction for this practice, and in the process protect the State from legal challenge.
A department memorandum outlines the situation whereby “[p]rison is the only legal place of detention” available to judges in sentencing women. It then details the legal problem at hand: It is true that at present some justices have adopted the practice, in cases where they think fit (usually infanticide cases), to sentence a female offender to a term of imprisonment not to be enforced if she undertakes to stay in a convent for a fixed period. This is, however, only a makeshift practice and there are no positive means of compelling the offender to remain in the convent, if at any time she chooses to leave.
Women referred to the Magdalene laundries by the Irish courts were always entitled to walk free, and the State knew this to be the case.
It never informed the women of their legal entitlements.
Rather, the legislation envisaged by the department would have enabled the Minister to certify “certain residential institutions or houses” as legal places of detention for female prisoners within the meaning of the Prison Acts. And, the industrial and reformatory school system was the preferred model for bringing these religious homes under direct State control. The Minister would appoint “persons to act as Managers”, he would approve “the rules and regulations”, he would retain “the right to have them inspected periodically by inspectors of his department”, and he would be obliged to defray the “cost of upkeep of persons committed to the institutions by way of capitation grants”. The draft “Heads of Bill” legislated for each of these provisions.
How many women are we talking about? Between 1926 and 1964, the courts sent at least 54 women to Catholic Magdalene asylums, at least four Protestant women were sent to the Bethany Home, 26 women went to Our Lady’s Home, Henrietta Street (an institution with a commercial laundry), one woman was sent to the Regina Coeli Hostel, and one woman to the Sean Ros Abbey. In March 1944 the Department of Justice could document an additional twenty-nine women on probation at a variety of religious “Homes”, including six Magdalene laundries.
The Criminal Justice (Female Offenders) Bill, 1942 never did become law. The Religious Congregations running Magdalene Laundries – the Sisters of Mercy, the Sisters of Charity, the Good Shepherd Sisters, and the Sisters of Our Lady of Charity of Refuge – would always resist direct State control. The nuns would never allow “inspectors”: the laundries were never inspected, never regulated. And yet, the practice continued whereby the courts referred women beyond the control of the judicial system into unregulated and non-licensed institutions. And the Department of Justice stood by and refused “to intervene, to come to the aid” of these citizens of the State.
What the Department of Justice must now answer for is its awareness of this “makeshift” practice and its refusal to act. It never prohibited judges from sending women to the laundries. Then as now, the State sought to protect its own interests. It sought to provide legal sanction by way of legislation just as now it cowers behind liability law.
The State must own this historic failure. It must own its complicity and collusion in this particular institutional abuse. And it must account for each and every woman who entered these institutions having been referred there by the courts. – Yours, etc,
JAMES M SMITH,
Associate Professor English
Department and Irish Studies Program,
Boston College,
Massachusetts,
US.
Palestinian access to water
Madam, – The Israeli ambassador (November 4th) claims that the Palestinians refused a generous Israeli offer at Camp David and Taba.
The ambassador should have told your readers the parts of the Occupied Palestinian territories that were to be retained by Israel in this generous offer. These were: the Jordan Valley, 25 per cent of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, the Dead Sea, the Latrun salient and the No Man’s Land. All together, these make nearly 50 per cent of the Occupied Palestinian territories.
In his book, Palestine Peace Not Apartheid, former US president, Jimmy Carter stated: “It was later claimed that the Palestinians rejected a generous offer. The fact is no such offer was ever made” (page 152).
President Carter also quoted Ehud Barak, the Israeli prime minister at the time, as saying: “The only thing that took place at Taba was non-binding contacts between senior Israelis and senior Palestinians” (page 152).
The ambassador quotes Prime Minister Netanyahu offering the Palestinians “its own flag, its own national anthem, its own government” in a speech on June 14th this year. The ambassador didn’t mention that in that speech Mr Netanyahu didn’t say anything about the boundaries he had in mind for a Palestinian state. It was as if he were offering the Palestinians a state on the moon.
In the same speech, Mr Netanyahu laid down pre-conditions set by for a Palestinian state, which deprived it of any kind of sovereignty, making it no more than a Mickey Mouse state, certainly not “an independent, viable, sovereign Palestinian state”, as required by the Road Map.
I for one believe that the true vision of Mr Netanyahu was published on January 17th, 2002 by Associated Press writer, Jack Katzenell, who wrote: “Former Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said . . . that a Palestinian state must never be established and that Yasser Arafat must be overthrown”.
Finally, the evacuation of Gaza in 2005 speaks for itself: Israel redeployed its occupying forces unilaterally, moving out of the room, but surrounding the house.
It is becoming obvious to everyone, except the Israelis, that they are playing in “extra time” and that, since they are unwilling to allow the creation of an independent, viable, sovereign Palestinian state, the only option left will be a single bi-national state.
In the 21st century, Israel to be a democratic state, cannot rule over all the people between the Jordan and the Sea, as it has done since 1967. There will have to be “one man one vote” for everyone currently subject to Israeli rule – and a bi-national state. – Yours, etc,
Ambassador HIKMAT AJJURI,
General Delegation of Palestine,
Mount Merrion Avenue,
Blackrock,
Co Dublin.

Well I must be off

best wishes John

Dweeping the leaves

November 8, 2009 by johnblakey

Sweeping the leaves 8 November 2009

I am sweeping up the leaves on the drive, they lie at my feet, gold through every shade of brown fading to black. The wind does not stir, for once the rain is gone. I sweep and sweep and scrape them up into bag a silvery grey garden bag. They lie damply quiescent some still glowing in the wan autumnal sun.
You need an iron back to be a gardener, I think mine is made of plastic, biodegradable plastic. I bend and lift another shovelful of leaves, bend and shovel, another bag filled.
A curious little robin come and peeps in through out window, he clings to the rose, twig and with a beady eye observes Mary eating her breakfast. His red breast glows in the morning sun.
Another day of bangs and pops. Even Kitten shudders and takes refuge under the table perching precariously on Mary’s old typewriter. Puddy lies on the bed eyes glowing and Fluff is nowhere to be seen.

Mary is reading a book of cat poems, I am quite touched by Hal Summers My Old Cat:

My old cat is dead,
Who would butt me with his head,
He had the sleekest fur.
He had the blackest purr.
Always gentle with us
Was this black puss,
But when I found him today
Stiff and cold where he lay
His look was a lion’s,
Full of rage, defiance:
Oh, he would not pretend
That what came was a friend
But met met it in pure hate.
Well died, my old cat.

Postcards

Greetings from Blackpool, England
http://www.flickr.com/photos/emperordalek/4082472247/

Happy Mount Park, Morecambe, England
http://www.flickr.com/photos/emperordalek/4083232324/

Greetings from Dorset, Dorset, England
http://www.flickr.com/photos/emperordalek/4083233660/

Summer, Eilean Donan Castle, Dornie, Wester Ross, Highlands of Scotland
http://www.flickr.com/photos/emperordalek/4083235052/

Mutitjula Maggie Springs, Australia
http://www.flickr.com/photos/emperordalek/4083236676/

A Porridge lady card from Skye, Scotland: Treading the washing
http://www.flickr.com/photos/emperordalek/4083374278/

Postcrossing card from Canada: Dunvegan Bridge, Dunvegan, Alberta, Canada
http://www.flickr.com/photos/emperordalek/4082616561/

Well I must be off

best wishes John

Obituary: Ruth Duckworth: potter and sculptor

Ruth Duckworth was one of the most innovative and influential postwar potters in Britain, before transforming herself in America from a ground-breaking studio potter to an important sculptor in clay.
She was born Ruth Windmuller in 1919 in Hamburg, the youngest of five children in a prosperous Jewish family with nannies and servants. Her father was a lawyer, born in Manchester, where his family owned cotton mills. Life in Germany in the 1920s and 1930s was far from easy and, while the Windmuller family was comparatively fortunate, there were many hardships and restrictions. She wished to study art, but art school was forbidden (to prevent the “pollution” of Aryan culture) and so she came to England in 1936 to live with her sister, who had married a sea captain and was residing in Liverpool.
Duckworth enrolled at the Liverpool School of Art, where she studied, somewhat unsuccessfully, painting, drawing and, particularly, sculpture. During the war she was employed by a travelling puppet theatre and worked in a munitions factory. After the war she studied stone carving at the Kennington School of Art and spent nearly three years carving tombstones three days a week. Her sculptural work culminated in a large commission, Stations of the Cross in St. Joseph’s, New Malden, Surrey, which was executed with her husband, Aidron Duckworth.
Duckworth had begun working in clay and approached the famous potter, Lucie Rie, for some glaze recipes. Rie suggested that she would need some training and Duckworth enrolled at the Hammersmith School, but only stayed a year. She found “the teaching was too doctrinaire. A pot must have a foot, a middle, and a lip”. She spent a further two years studying at the Central School.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article6906712.ece

Letters:

Guardian:

I agree with the government for sacking Professor David Nutt, who is telling people that cannabis is less dangerous than alcohol or cigarettes (“Ministers face rebellion on drug chief’s sacking”, News).
I have manic depression, diagnosed after I had my first breakdown, aged 15. Twenty four years on and I am still suffering.
Cannabis has been instrumental in my affliction. I smoked my first joint a couple of months before my initial breakdown. Since then, during hypomanic phases, I smoked more, resulting in being arrested about five times and sent to the locked ward of the Royal Edinburgh mental asylum around 10 times. Almost every bad episode of my illness has been preceded by smoking cannabis, though I have never taken it regularly or heavily. Three years ago, my psychiatrist said he would not continue to treat me if I ever took cannabis again. I have never taken it since.
It is obvious when you spend time in mental asylums that the people there are atrociously affected when they take cannabis. It is teenagers who are most damaged. David Nutt should visit some locked wards and speak to some psychiatrists and their patients. I have smoked cigarettes and drunk moderately since an early age, but these have caused nothing like the damage of cannabis. It is the immediate hit, the spiralling thoughts and inner revelations that are so dangerous.
Archie Linklater,
Gorgie, Edinburgh
■ You say in your leader (“Why do politicians shun science?”, News) that the dismissal of Professor Nutt “demonstrates how profoundly disfigured our politics is becoming”, yet you also insult Professor Nutt when you say he did not “get the politics and did not help his case with some ill-judged intervention”. This throwaway remark is surely as worthless as that of the politicians criticised in the same article.
Prof Nutt is an eminent scientist in his field. He has simply produced the scientific evidence relating to drugs. It is not his job to “get the politics”, nor to time his “intervention”. Your judgmental remarks add to the hysterical witch hunt of scientists in many parts of the media and devalue the rest of your writing on the subject, which has been generally cogent and thoughtful.
Prof Nutt should be hailed as the modest hero that he is. He should be reinstated immediately, given a public apology and his policies adopted forthwith. This episode is horribly reminiscent of the shameful treatment of another eminent scientist, Dr David Kelly, and the lack of science-based evidence for weapons of mass destruction.
Mark Bolland
London N1
■ Professor David Nutt seemed to have lost all sense of reason in his article “Since Brown took over, our advice has been undermined by government” (News commentary).
He says that cannabis is “never lethal”. Tell that to the families of users who have taken their own lives or killed someone while under the influence of the drug. He says that possession “of a single joint” can now lead to five years’ imprisonment. This is the maximum for possession and judges have a range of punishment from absolute discharge to the five-year maximum. In most cases, the offence is dealt with by a police caution. There is more to politics than academic evidence. There are public attitudes to the issue. It is too late to control drugs such as nicotine and alcohol effectively but let’s keep other popular drugs on the danger list.
Peter Jones
Newark, Notts
■ It’s not the job of the government’s scientific advisers to offer scientific advice to the government. They should be providing a rationale for government policy, the way military intelligence advisers did in the run-up to the Iraq invasion.
Eric Alexander
High Wycombe, Bucks

It was the Mickey Mouse towels hanging in the garden that convinced me something was badly wrong. The lights shining out from the villa were the more obvious sign but it is the towels I remember most.
Friends had generously offered us their Lanzarote villa for our honeymoon. We had only recently made the transition from studying to work and a foreign holiday had been out of the question but suddenly we were looking forward to December sunshine and fabulous family-sized accommodation. 
The man at the car hire firm at the airport had no record of us and no available car.  However his family knew our friends well and he offered to drive us to our destination. As midnight approached we pulled up outside what was clearly an occupied villa. My husband knocked on the door. A middle-aged man, dressed in shorts and with an unfeasibly large belly, appeared. We showed him our keys and the letter confirming our booking from the holiday company our friends used as agents. “We’re here for another 10 days,” he snarled. “But it’s our honeymoon,” said my husband plaintively, to a shut door.
The car rep managed to stop giggling nervously and drove us to a hotel. Next morning, when we should have been relaxing in the sunshine, we occupied the tiny office of the car hire company trying to resolve the situation. The agents’ English office was closed for Christmas and it took many faxes and phone calls before the Lanzarote office admitted it was at fault. Eventually they offered us a small flat in a very touristy resort. However, the mother of the car hire man told them to expect the bill for our stay in a nearby villa she had an interest in and which had unexpectedly just become available. It was the day before Christmas Eve and we realised how fortunate we were.
Our honeymoon still refused to proceed smoothly. The following day I lost a contact lens. I had failed to pack either a spare or my glasses, so the rest of the holiday was a blur. After the stress of starting new jobs and organising the wedding, we both fell ill. Not the best start to married life but nearly 15 years later we’re still dining out on the story!
Zoe Mellen

Independent:

While many of us may find the factory farming of animals in rich countries objectionable, farm animals maintained on pasture grass by herders or raised on crop by-products on family farms in poor countries help more than a billion people living on a little more than a dollar a day (“Meat creates half of all greenhouse gases”, 1 November). The biggest concern of many experts regarding livestock in developing countries is the prospect of hotter and more extreme tropical environments, threatening livelihoods based on livestock, and supplies of milk, meat and eggs among hungry communities that need these nourishing foods most. For people living in absolute poverty and chronic hunger, the solution is not to rid the world of livestock, but rather to find ways to farm animals more profitably, as well as sustainably.
Carlos Seré
Director General, International Livestock Research Institute
Nairobi, Kenya
I am an illegal downloader, but I like traditional country music, and where do you buy old-timers like Dick Curless, Lucille Starr and Wilma Lee? (“Illegal downloaders ’spend the most on music’”, 1 November.) I am not depriving anyone of an income. If I didn’t download what I like, I wouldn’t get it at all.
Ron Livingstone
Aberdeen
My blog about the niqab in Egypt received very wide and positive coverage in the Arabic blogosphere and press (“Our man in Cairo rashly enters Egypt’s veil debate”, 1 November). One comment expressed gratitude for “the British Ambassador’s understanding of the Moslem’s sentiment”. Another wrote that what I had written was “logical… and gives us an example of how to deal with sensitive issues”. As to whether I as a non-Muslim am entitled to comment, my blog only represents my personal opinions. I remain passionately attached to the notion of tolerance and deeply fearful of any exhibition of intolerance. To exclude someone from a debate on the basis of religion is, to me, a sign of intolerance.
Dominic Asquith
Ambassador, British Embassy
Cairo, Egypt
While I compliment you on your “Army of Volunteers” feature (1 November), it is a pity that you do not include anyone involved in the criminal justice system – which includes magistrates, youth offending support, victim support, witness support, custody and prison visitors and special constables.
Mike Brayshaw
Worthing, west sussex
Thank you for publicising the spate of suicides in Hebden Bridge, Yorkshire (The New Review, 1 November). It’s high time that we saw our rural communities for the severely battered places they are: suffering a lack of affordable housing, and with around one in four households living in or at the margins of poverty in the English countryside, according to the Commission for Rural Communities. The same 2009 study reported that 25 per cent of children in rural areas – 1,000,000 children – live in households below the low-income threshold. The next government must press to end such root causes of despair.
James Derounian
University of Gloucestershire
Cheltenham
That Wales is a hotspot for badger persecution should be no surprise when we have a Welsh Assembly promoting a badger cull, supposedly to lessen the incidence of bovine TB (“And they call us a nation of animal lovers”, 1 November). Culling other wildlife is also on the agenda. The money wasted could be better used encouraging farmers to grow more fruit and vegetables, both difficult to source locally.
Derek Hector
Whitchurch, Cardiff
Connor Ferris asks why women should get special treatment via all-female shortlists, but not black or older people (Letters, 1 November). There may be a case for positive discrimination in favour of minority groups; but there is no equivalence with the case of women: women are not a minority and outnumber men by quite a margin. In general, whether black or white, young or old, their priorities are similar and differ from those of men. That is why they should have equal representation in Parliament.
Julie Harrison
Hertford
Janet Street-Porter criticises Radio 4 apart from The Archers and Desert Island Discs (1 November). But what about the many book programmes, plays, news and interviews, investigations, and programmes on history, food and gardening? The list could go on and on.
Margot Kafno
London NW5
In your entertaining feature on bizarre formulae “The appliance of science” (1 November), it would have been amusing to see the funding formulae used by research councils to support the scientists.
Kartar Uppal

Times:

Thank you, Jenni Russell (“Crazy law leaves a child out in the cold”, Comment, last week), for drawing attention to the lunacy and intrusiveness of the Independent Safeguarding Authority (ISA). A lack of convictions does not make a person respectable, and the only effect of this piece of officiousness will be to stifle community activities.
We can also expect that the agency will be disregarded as parents continue to make their own private arrangements. Some years ago I had the misfortune to place my autistic daughter with a registered childminder. The person had ticked all the right boxes with social services but had no idea how to care for my daughter.
Fortunately, I found a family prepared to help me. The lady of the house was not registered, but had the gift of communicating with disturbed children. We came to a private arrangement which worked brilliantly for years, and my daughter, now in her thirties, remembers her with great affection.
Kathryn Bennett
Reading, Berkshire
Related Links
The child protection racket
Parents’ views wanted
I do not think and I have never said that adults should no longer be free to decide who is entrusted with their children. There is nothing in the government’s vetting and barring scheme which interferes with such parental responsibilities. It is when schools, clubs and organisations make decisions about who works with children that registration with the scheme may be required, if the adults’ degree of contact is sufficiently great.
Ministers have asked me to check whether the present proposals on the degree of contact that triggers the requirement to register are proportionate. That work is under way. Nothing is yet decided and I would welcome your readers’ views, especially those of parents. This scheme is not about criminalising people, or presuming guilt. It is about protecting children and the vulnerable and giving their parents and carers greater confidence.
Sir Roger Singleton
Chair, ISA, Darlington
Apply common sense
The father who was not allowed to take a 12-year-old boy home from a youth club because he had no written permission should have arranged to pick him up down the road and take him home, especially as he had his own son in the car and knew the family. Last week two boys of similar age came into my garden — they were lost. Without thinking twice, I put them in my car and drove two miles to their school, from where they could get home. Should I not have done this?
Adults must take the initiative to get around ludicrous laws that are supposed to protect children and use some common sense when they see children neglected or at risk.
Gillian Williams
Woking, Surrey
Growing up the old way
This is no way to bring up our children. With proper parental care and guidance, they have to be encouraged to discover the world and learn how to look after themselves, just as our 1950s-1960s generation did.
Once we had learnt to ride bikes, at the age of eight or nine, we were off, cycling to school and exploring the local area — frequently all day in the summer holidays — often being “rescued” from a scrape or accident by a passing adult; just as we shall continue to do when we see a child in obvious distress, lost or hurt.
They must be free to ride bikes and buses, go to the shops, play in the park, climb trees and scrape their knees and learn which “friend” or adult to trust, or to avoid. It is time to make adults, and let children, grow up.
Kevin and Diana Hunt
Corsham, Wiltshire
Volunteers unwelcome
I recently volunteered to help a charity which takes people with handicaps to the theatre, ballet and so on. I filled in the forms, underwent the criminal checks and waited. I was then told I had to go on a disability awareness course first. After sitting through what I can only describe as a nonsensical few hours, I decided not to do any volunteer work as I would have been constantly worried about transgressing diktats.
My experience must have been repeated in many other places and the latest nonsense will make volunteer work almost impossible to do.
Susan Kaye
London NW8
It won’t stop predators
As a parent who takes two sons plus mates to cubs and helps another friend with her disabled son, this approach makes me spin with rage. Not one child will be saved from abuse, as most paedos, family or otherwise, are always well below the radar.
Anastasia Parkes
Winchester, Hampshire

The actions Tony Blair set in motion while joined at the hip to George W Bush have set back the reputation of this country to that of the worst days of colonial ravaging and overlording. Is this the face the European Union wants to present to the rest of the world (“Just the man for the job?”, Focus, and “If we must have a president, make him dull”, Editorial, last week)?
Legacies of this man’s leadership include a concrete wall around our parliament and a near-Orwellian crackdown on civil rights and freedoms. Is this really the kind of “leadership” the rest of Europe wants? Surely we should all be trying to distance ourselves from his grotesque foreign policy failings. His appointment as a peacemaker for the Middle East was insulting enough.
Martin Wespestad
London SE22
Hague’s vague recall
Your leader may be right in saying that Blair is too big a figure to be EU president. However, it is extraordinary that William Hague bases his opposition to Blair on the decision to invade Iraq. Hague was a strong supporter of the invasion in the decisive debate in March 2003, ridiculing the Lib Dem arguments against it.
Anthony Garrett
Falkland, Fife
I know just the man . . .
Surely Gordon Brown is the best UK candidate? Such a move would solve the leadership problem for Labour, he could leave with his head high and there could be a general election. He is ideally equipped for a non-decision- making position. It would also enable him to pay back Blair.
Vincent Sinnott
St-Raphael, France
Born with myasthenia gravis and doing well
I was very concerned to read about the plight of Baby RB (“Parents fight in court over life of disabled son”, News, last week). My daughter was also born with congenital myasthenia (CM) and at birth my husband and I were told she might be a physical and mental vegetable. She did indeed have a troublesome childhood with multiple hospital admissions, intubations and extensive medical input. At one year of age, like Baby RB, she could hardly move, at five years she walked about 50 yards and she used a wheelchair to her early teens.
Twenty years on she can walk a mile on a good day and drive her car and she leads a full, happy and independent life at university. CM is indeed rare but there are drugs that can boost the fatigued muscles; physiotherapy is vital, and the Myasthenia Gravis Association is an excellent source of advice and support.
Frances Brannon-Rhodes
Virginia Water, Surrey

It is not appropriate to criticise the professional activities of yesterday with the knowledge of today (“Blundering doctor ‘killed’ Keats”, News, October 25). To state that “Dr James Clark delayed treating Keats for tuberculosis for almost a month because he wrongly thought the poet was suffering from stress and a routine stomach ailment” is to overlook the absence of accurate diagnosis and specific treatment. Clark’s use of bleeding and starvation was an accepted treatment then.
Keats died in 1821; post-mortem tubercle “warts” were not noted until 1862, and the tubercle bacillus was not discovered until 1882. Clark’s belief that Keats had a “stomach ailment” is in keeping with modern medical experience that some chest conditions may produce symptoms that suggest a “stomach ailment”. Clark’s error was in not relieving Keats’s severe symptoms. This was particularly distressing to Keats, since, as a qualified apothecary, he knew what was available.
As has been pointed out in my recently published The Dying Keats: A Case for Euthanasia?, fear of the “Keatsian experience” is one of the problems driving the call for assisted suicide today, despite our knowing that this is caused by a lack of effective care.
Professor Brian Livesley
Oxford
Poisoning cats is not the stuff of humour
I am really not too sure how tongue-in-cheek Rod Liddle’s “Antifreeze — cool for cats” (Comment, last week) was meant to be but it did not make me laugh (he does, however, generally raise a smile). Several years ago, in my capacity as a magistrate, I sat on the case of a local man who had killed more than 20 cats by giving them antifreeze. We were told by an expert witness — that is, a vet — of the slow and agonising death the cats would have suffered. Evidently cats cannot resist the sweetness of antifreeze and, while I do appreciate the problem of cats’ toilet habits, there are other, rather less drastic, methods of keeping them away.
Victoria Toone
Nuneaton, Warwickshire
Pets have to do their business somewhere
I don’t like dogs — they are noisy, they invade your space and they defecate wherever they like — but I would certainly not condone killing them with chemicals in food. Pride over material things, such as a garden or house, is purely a human thing. Does an animal deserve to be killed for urinating on strawberries?
Rachael Simpson
address supplied

Telegraph:

SIR – At a time when unelected quangos are at the top of David Cameron’s hit list, Gordon Brown lumbers us with yet another one, the Infrastructure Planning Commission (report, November 1).
This particular one has the power to despoil large swaths of our countryside with wind farms and destroy historic buildings within our towns and cities – without giving us any opportunity to appeal against its decisions.
The Government does not understand that middle England has a deep-rooted sense of history. It is abhorrent to think that an unelected quango will allow a developer to demolish historic buildings if any “material harm” caused to an area’s heritage “is outweighed by the wider social, economic and environmental benefits”.
If this happened in France they would already be manning the barricades.
Barrie Glenton
Bridgwater, Somerset
SIR – Before introducing another taxpayer-funded quango, the Government should improve the existing planning system. It should offer more carrot and less stick to those affected by proposed schemes for major infrastructural projects. Instead of becoming involved in prolonged and expensive consultations, objectors could be offered enhanced financial compensation.
In this way much opposition could be overcome considerably more quickly and at less cost. A sugar-coated pill is easier to swallow.
David Saunders
Sidmouth, Devon
SIR – The Government’s latest planning quango will have unprecedented power. The body will have the ability to ride roughshod over public opinion and impose major projects, like the proposed third runway at Heathrow, on local communities.
It will also base its decisions on national policy statements issued by ministers as diktats with no substantive vote in Parliament. This lack of democratic legitimacy means that the quango is liable to be subject to challenges through judicial review, the European Court of Human Rights and the European Court of Justice, and therefore is actually likely to slow down the planning process.
That’s why the Conservatives would abolish the Infrastructure Planning Commission and put democratic accountability back at the heart of planning. National policy statements would be subject to a substantive vote in Parliament, and democratically accountable ministers would take the final decisions.
Abolishing democracy in the planning system is no way to reinvigorate our broken politics.
Bob Neill MP (Con)
Shadow Planning Minister
London SW1
SIR – Andrew Gilligan (report, November 1) illustrates the threat that the new planning regulations on listed buildings pose to our historical heritage and countryside.
As seems the norm, these regulations were slipped through without proper consideration of their potential abuse. It is impossible to trust yet another quango with such a destructive agenda.
This government has an abysmal record of ignorance of the countryside. The Government is under so much pressure to erect thousands of useless turbines, parts of our cherished countryside and doubtless many historic buildings will be lost forever.
Simon Lever
Torquay, Devon
Breaking up banks will not make them safer
SIR – Government plans to use parts of Lloyds and Royal Bank of Scotland to create new retail banks (report, November 1) seem aimed at creating a saleable story rather than long-term banking stability.
Over the years, many small banks and building societies have merged into larger institutions, having found it increasingly difficult to compete against big banks.
Until the recent Scottish bank debacle, there was arguably too much competition in savings and mortgage markets. A return to a healthy economy, plus higher capital requirements, will make the world no easy place for the high street-fledglings that Mr Darling plans to create.
As indirect shareholders in Lloyds Banking Group, taxpayers can at least be thankful that these plans are not harmful to Lloyds’ plans to raise new capital, on which its recovery, and our hopes of a positive return on our investment, depend.
Sadly, though, the Government’s cosmetic proposal suggests it has not understood the banking and regulatory inadequacies that contributed to the credit crunch, let alone tried to deal with them.
Until it does, one of the new banks could be the next Northern Rock.
Rod Barrett
Bromley, Kent
SIR – The emergence of high-street names from the past (such as Williams & Glyn’s Bank) will, it is hoped, encourage a return to some of the more traditional aspects of banking that seem to have been lost in recent years.
One such aspect might usefully be the approval of loans using something more tangible than a hastily completed form, followed by a conversation with a call centre operative. How about reintroducing the interview with the branch manager as a start?
Lovat Timbrell
Brighton
SIR – For once, albeit tardily, the Government is adopting a sensible policy.
It is ironic that the effect will be much the same as if it had introduced a version of America’s old Glass-Steagall Act, which it opposed, despite the support for it by the Governor of the Bank of England.
Peter Spira
London W14
SIR – It is remarkable that in suspending the likely veto by the Competition Commission in order to steer Lloyds TSB into rescuing HBOS (a bit like sending a trawler to rescue the Titanic) Gordon Brown has now landed the merged (almost submerged, actually) Lloyds Banking Group in hot water with Europe.
To suit European requirements it must now sell off the lifeboats. Heaven help Lloyds shareholders like myself.
We thought we were investing in the world’s safest and most boring bank, but it seems to be have been well and truly scuttled.
Jane O’Nions
Sevenoaks, Kent
SIR – Under successive governments, major industries and utilities were broken up and sold. Many of them are now owned and exploited by foreign companies.
The cost to our country has been huge, with profits going overseas, rather than to benefit the pension funds of British residents.
Do our politicians really care whether this nation owns or controls anything any more?
Bev Gray
St Neots, Cambridgeshire
SIR – The main benefit of creating three new banks is that there will be more board, executive and consultative positions for ex-MPs.
Paul Dong
London SW18
Hidden police
SIR – I have been a police constable for 27 years. I spent 20 years on the streets. Officers are sucked away from this (Letters, November 1) for many roles that could be performed by civilians. Sometimes officers are employed drafting duties for their colleagues; dealing with complaints; working in intelligence offices or telephone control rooms; in training roles, policy groups or steering committees; or in diversity and equal opportunities departments.
I hope that this shortlist sheds some light on why there are not as many officers on the streets these days. As long as our senior officers speak of “stakeholders”, and recite whatever is the buzzword of the year, there is little chance of this list decreasing.
It may well take a new government to finally to dictate the various police services which roles could be satisfactorily carried out by police staff (that’s civil staff in old terminology) and which should remain as jobs for warranted police officers.
P. P. Taylor
Tunbridge Wells, Kent
Moving south
SIR – Ian Taylor (Letters, November 1) says that unemployed white men in northern cities are not willing to move to fill job vacancies. There is an obvious reason for this.
My sister has just bought a three-bed semi-detached house with a large garden in north Tyneside for £70,000. At the same time, my daughter has bought a similar house with a small garden and overlooking a council estate in Surrey for £375,000.
How can people be expected to move southwards? To say that they lack the education to fill good jobs, just because they come from “up north” is pure bigotry. There are plenty of people in the south who are poorly educated.
Annie Murrell
Great Bookham, Surrey
A load of cobblers
SIR – “Will Guy Ritchie’s take on Sherlock Holmes be a load of old cobblers?” asks Seven’s Christmas culture planner (November 1). Of course it will: we need look no further than trailer stills showing Robert Downey Jr and Jude Law sporting designer stubble.
Late Victorian gentlemen were either bewhiskered or clean shaven. Indeed, Holmes was able to deduce the position Watson stood in relation to the morning light coming through his window because of the “positively slovenly” state of one side of his imperfectly shaven chin.
Because film scriptwriters inevitably and wrongly think they can come up with stories and characters better than Conan Doyle’s, manifestations of Holmes on wide screen, in contrast to some fine renditions on radio and television, have ranged from garbled to to nonsensical. Guy Ritchie’s effort looks as though it will be at the far end of that spectrum.
Andy Connell
Appleby, Cumbria
The Pope is not guilty of opportunism
SIR – For 450 years the Church of England has readily welcomed Catholics into its ranks either because of persecution (in the early days) or disaffection. So it is strange that the Catholic church should now be accused of “opportunism” by Christopher Purvis (Letters, November 1) when it makes a conditional offer to take in disaffected Anglicans.
My understanding is that the Pope’s offer is dependent upon acceptance of the basic tenets of the Catholic faith, but he is astute enough to know that nobody can be forced to believe anything and that many who consider crossing the floor will first have to wrestle with the consciences.
It is not true that the two faiths have “the same firm grounding”. There are major doctrinal differences and I cannot see any Anglican who openly rejects, transubstantiation, for example, being accepted into the Catholic church.
Frank Howard
Bromsgrove, Worcestershire
SIR – Christopher Purvis refers to the damage done to years of Aids education in Africa by the recent visit of the Pope. In fact, years of Western-sponsored Aids education has exacerbated the problem. It may well be that the Catholic church’s position could just be the answer.
Earlier this year, Dr Edward Green, director of the Aids Prevention Research Project at the Harvard Centre for Population and Development Studies, one of the world’s foremost Aids research institutes, said that the best evidence showed that widespread availability of condoms led to higher rates of HIV infection.
Condoms are sold around the world as the means to “safe sex”. There is no such thing. Offering such a false sense of security is wickedly misleading and only exacerbates the problem by giving people the confidence to have sex with more people than they might otherwise have done.
Dr Green concluded that the single most important change associated with reduction in HIV infection rates is a reduction in multiple sexual partners. This is pretty much what the Catholic church is suggesting.
Elizabeth Bell
Norwich
The fourth plinth
SIR – Now that the Lisbon Treaty is just about dusted, the time is ripe to fill the empty plinth in Trafalgar Square.
Might I suggest Sir Edward Heath? On the plinth should be inscribed: “The Common Market. Liar! Liar!”
Jim Ryder
Hardwicke, Gloucestershire

Well I must be off

best wishes John

Rowena

November 7, 2009 by johnblakey

Rowena 7 November 2009

I am off out to have my eyes tested. I am three months late but a sudden fit of guilt made me go in and make an appointment. I stuff the ivy which has fallen from the wall into the car Mary pulls and I push and finally it is all in, I shut the boot with a bang. I find a car parking spot and go off for my eye test. Mr B my opticians has a new assistant: Rowena. She is rather nervous and I suspect I am her first solo patient. I gulp and swallow as her nervousness is contagious. She looks about fourteen and mousey. But she tries her best. She gives me a rather watery smile, and I am led off to the examining room.
First the dreaded Optimax laser thing, “Press you eye here” she says nervously, I press my eye here and press harder and harder and twist my neck. The trouble is that the designer didn’t make room for the nose, and when you press your eye to the thing you can’t breathe! “Just a little bit, more they mutter, open your eyes really wid.” Open them wider, impossible. The laser flashes and my eyeball is mapped. Curious to see your eyeball the size of your head. Rowena and Mr B gaze at it critically, I try to start to breathe again. They mutter technicalese at one another and pause swinging their heads to look at me doubtfully. I tense don’t want to go through the non breathing bit again. But its all right I am led upstairs by Rowena, despite a very short skirt and a nice top she still look mousey.
I am sat in the chair and read the letters, “Can you read the next line?” she politely inquires.
What next line its all a row of dots to me. I am asked to stare at circles and illuminated squares until I am dizzy. She puts a pair of glasses on me with changable lenses, and waves them in front of me.
“Is number one better or number 2?” I of course have forgotten what number one was like.
Finally we are all done I have double vision and a bright red afterimage with all the lights.
I do notice that when she looks into my eyes she breathes. I have never noticed Mr B breathing, perhaps he doesn’t which is worrying can I have had an undead optician all these years? She has a subtle not unpleasant perfume. Finally we are done. She checks the results with the last lot and gives a mouse like squeak of dismay, they are quite different. She scurries off to get the boss.
He looks at her results and we go through it all again. Read the chart the bright lights the green and red squares. The looking into the eyes with the blue light. I notice academically that he really doesn’t seem to breathe. He hands Rowena his latest torch blue light thingy and she has a double check, she breathes all right. I stare at Mr B looking for any signs of breathing. He mistake my anxious look for concern about my eyes and gives me a reassuring smile. No not a sign of breathing.
An eye test usually takes thirty minutes this one has lasted an hour and a half. Finally he is finished and checks her figure and they agree. Little Miss Mouse manages a smug look when his back turned. They look at me again in mild concern and swap technicalities.
“Your eyes have changed quite a lot since the last time we saw you, we advise a pair of new glasses” Little Miss Mouse pridefully sticks here chest out at the we.
So we trail down and I select a pair £382!

Postcards

San Diego, California, USA
http://www.flickr.com/photos/emperordalek/4080079801/

Hayling Island and Langstone
http://www.flickr.com/photos/emperordalek/4080841654/

East Devon coast: Seton, Exmouth, Sidmouth Ladram Bay, Beer
http://www.flickr.com/photos/emperordalek/4080843078/

Sorrento La Spiaggia di Puolo, Italy
http://www.flickr.com/photos/emperordalek/4080083911/

All creatures great and small
http://www.flickr.com/photos/emperordalek/4080085263/

Postcrossing card from China city gate?
http://www.flickr.com/photos/emperordalek/4080120351/

Post card from Malaysia, cute kittens
http://www.flickr.com/photos/emperordalek/4080122043/

Postcrossing card from Poland multi-view
http://www.flickr.com/photos/emperordalek/4080883398/

Postcard from Belarus: Rather nice looking hotel
http://www.flickr.com/photos/emperordalek/4080885524/

Obituary: Nancy Spero: artist

Like so many women artists of her generation, Nancy Spero was overlooked for too long. During the early part of her long and defiantly uninhibited career the male-dominated art world preferred to ignore Spero’s achievements. But she never felt disheartened by this neglect. On the contrary: her finest work always sprang from a stubborn, angry refusal to be defeated. The female figures who energise her art are fuelled by a militant dynamism as they run, fly and fight through a succession of dramatic encounters.
As she grew older, and international attention began at last to focus on her work, Spero grew even more determined to make epic art from the battle against oppression of so many kinds. Her scrolls and printed installations became ever more monumental. With immense panache, she deployed them in spaces where every surface, floors,ceilings and walls, sprang into highly charged activity. Nothing, it seemed, could prevent her intense protagonists from combating and even humiliating the forces ranged against them.
Spero was born in 1926 in Cleveland, Ohio, and her family moved to Chicago when she was a year old. While studying there at the School of the Art Institute, she met a similarly defiant young figurative painter, Leon Golub. A war veteran, he remained preoccupied by global conflict until his death in 2004, by when he had been married to Spero for 53 years. And when they began living together, Golub and Spero were united by their opposition to a US art world obsessed with avant-garde abstraction.
Hence their youthful decision to leave the US in 1956 and to explore Europe. Spero was excited above all by Ancient Etruscan art when they visited Italy. But in Paris, where they settled in 1959, she found supreme stimulus in the work of Antonin Artaud, whose manic-depressive art and writings culminated in the Theatre of Cruelty.
Spero, who had briefly studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris a decade earlier, warmed to the unbuttoned vehemence of Artaud’s work. She identified with his profound sense of alienation, and felt liberated by the idea of launching a spirited attack on everything she loathed in the postwar world. Dark paintings inhabited only by indistinct figures, all embroiled in strangely erotic conflicts, dominated her output in the Paris years. She learnt how to give vent to a sense of primal indignation and rage, and entitled one especially provocative 1960s image Les Anges, Merde, Fuck You.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article6905045.ece

Letters:
Guardian:

I hope the voters’ rebellion in talent shows such as The X Factor and Strictly Come Dancing will be replicated at next year’s general election, (Comment, 6 November). Who knows, just as TV viewers don’t like being told who to vote for, perhaps they’ll also turn on the media which has already decided that David Cameron will be the winner. 
Laura Marcus
Leek, Staffordshire
• Noticing the dysfunctional Belgian PM’s potential elevation to be president of the EU Council (Report, 5 November), I thought a haiku was in order, Mr Van Rompuy being a fan of the strange form. Herman, Flemming chief
Tries to rule grey, wet Belgium
Dwarf among big boys.
Michael Rafferty
Omagh, Tyrone, Northern Ireland
• Jimmy Carr’s joke about the rape alarm (G2, 5 November), is the sort of thing that would have (rightly) brought down a storm on the head of the late and inglorious Bernard Manning. In the case of Jimmy Carr it doesn’t. Something to do with Carr having gone to Cambridge, perhaps?
Richard Dargan
Old Coulsdon, Surrey
• The British taxpayer has paid for speechwriters (How the PM bought a dash of West Wing for $40,000, 4 November) so Gordon Brown is better able to communicate with Americans. British taxpayers might be willing to invest a little more so he could communicate with us?
Michael Gold
London
• Adrian Snook and his Stop the Spin group oppose “inappropriately sited wind turbines” (Spinners and losers in the wind turbine storm, 5 November). Can we conclude that he and the group support the local windfarm proposals which the independent Pro Wind Alliance considers to be appropriately sited after careful consideration?
Herbert Eppel
Leicester
• You can understand why the Catholic Education Service is disappointed about the ending of the “right of withdrawal” (Compulsory sex education, 6 November).
Steve Glass
Ulverston, Cumbria

Article history
While it’s not our place to say what exams people take, we do believe a meaningful introduction to Shakespeare should be part of every student’s cultural life (State schools are barred from offering elite International GCSE, 5 November). There is a reason why Shakespeare is the only compulsory writer on the secondary English curriculum. While we can understandably be accused of bias in this area, we know (because teachers and students tell us and evaluators document it) that when students engage actively with the plays, when they are up on their feet saying the words and making choices about character motivation and setting, they are also exploring living dilemmas about democracy, leadership, family loyalty, love and power. They increase their confidence, self-esteem and communication skills in the process.
In a culture of teaching and learning that is driven by exam results, our recent KS3 experiences have shown that if there isn’t a test on it, it’s less likely to get taught. And pupils are less likely to see the relevance of it. Until we rethink the curriculum and the relationship that examinations and tests have to the range of learning experiences we know young people need, there is a danger in saying OK to optional Shakespeare. It may mean a generation of young people leaving school with at best a vague memory of one or two plays and at worst no connection with Shakespeare at all. Young people don’t have to like Shakespeare, but they do need to be given the chance to make an informed decision about his work.
Jacqui O’Hanlon

I am a great admirer of George Monbiot, and am (I hope) as clear-sighted as he is about the self-inflicted disasters looming over our misguided species; but I must disagree with one point in his excellent dismantling of the “scepticism” of Clive James (Comment, 3 November). He claims that denial of catastrophic anthropogenic climate change is commonest among people over 65, who feel they have worked hard and have the right to wing their way around the globe, merrily adding to the pollution.
I am 63 and I find my contemporaries infinitely more worried about the future of the planet than their children. In fact it constantly amazes me that so many well-informed people in their 30s shrug off environmental problems with the moronic comment that “scientists will find a solution”. Yet these youngsters have small children of their own who, if crisis measures are not introduced, may die before they reproduce. My granddaughter will be three this month; if the rise of the sea-level and the degradation of natural resources continue at present rates, the planet will be barely habitable by the time she is 50. Shortages of food and water will have caused uncontrollable wars, droughts and floods will have displaced and killed hundreds of millions. It is not a pretty thought; but it has to be faced.
I agree with Monbiot that most people are in denial about it – denial caused by fear and their own impotence. But I have not noticed generational trends; only the usual forces of self-interest, preoccupation with narrow career issues, and feeble dependence of mind. Such things cut across all generations – or at least the few generations which remain before the day of reckoning and the conceited chatter of Clive James and his like is silenced. 
Giles Swayne
Composer-in-residence, Clare College, Cambridge
• George Monbiot notes with concern the rise of climate change denial. But this is to be expected as large numbers of people begin to absorb the seriousness of scientists’ predictions. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross worked with the dying and in her 1970 book, she suggests distinct stages in people coming to terms with impending disaster: First is simple denial, “It can’t be true”; next anger, “Why me?”; then bargaining, “How can I get the least bad result?”; next depression, as attempts at former normality fail; and finally acceptance. These stages are visible over people’s reactions to the growing scientific consensus. But while individual death is not avoidable, there is still much we can salvage for the Earth, if we are willing to live less greedily and more simply. It would be silly to give up campaigning because there is opposition.
Jenny Tillyard
Seaforde, Sussex

There is much evidence that the Taliban are less a fundamentalist religious group dedicated to sponsoring al-Qaida in international jihad and more an amalgam of groups seeking to fight foreign occupation and reassert the traditional dominance of the Pashtun group, which has largely been ceded to Tajiks and others, despite Karzai himself being a Pashtun (Brown will not walk away from fight but public support falters, November 6).
In this sense, Nato has helped to promote a civil war as well as resistance to what is seen by many Afghans as imperialist aggression, particularly by Britain, which has invaded Afghanistan three times.
Britain, the US and Nato should get out of Afghanistan and a negotiated settlement be sought involving regional powers and the Taliban, who may not prove dedicated to continuing to support al-Qaida’s presence. This is the only way. Otherwise Nato will be forced to withdraw as Russia was only 20 years ago, after the death of 15,000 troops.
But terrorism cannot be properly fought by extra surveillance on the streets of Britain. The only way is to convince Muslims that the west is not against them. This must involve rapprochement with Iran and Syria, withdrawal from Iraq and above all a just settlement in Palestine. Then we might be getting somewhere.
Peter Rowlands
Swansea
• The wars in Afghanistan and Vietnam, though arising from different causes, have developed striking similarities in management. In both there was a decision to use a military invasion when other means were available. In both, a puppet leader was installed. In both the resistance to the military occupation was badly underestimated. In both the reason for the occupation was flawed (when Vietnam was finally lost to the communists, there was no domino effect on its neighbours, while the idea that our troops, by killing Afghans, are making the streets of Britain safer is unworthy of a reasoned rebuttal). In both there occurred growing public pressure for withdrawal of our troops, eventually successful as regards the Vietnam war.
Harry Davis
Thames Ditton, Surrey
• It is encouraging that Kim Howells (Comment, 4 November) has broken ranks and questions the wisdom of government continuing to deploy troops in Afghanistan. However, it does not follow that the money would be better spent on yet more intrusive surveillance of “certain communities”. “Certain communities” in the UK are already the most intensively monitored in Europe, and there is no evidence that more of the same will make us safer. Indeed, excessive surveillance, if conducted poorly and without respect for rights, will reinforce the very alienation that leads some young people towards political violence. Rather than lobbying for more surveillance, the intelligence and security committee should oversee the spreading police and intelligence networks so they focus on those that intend harm while respecting rights of dissent.
Peter Gill
University of Liverpool
• Gordon Brown deserves our support over Afghanistan. It is true that in the past western armies have failed there, but that does not necessarily mean that they will fail again. The case for staying is complex, and it is easy to say that it would be cheaper simply to guard our own shores. However this would not prevent a 9/11 type attack, planned and provided for in Afghanistan. We must fight terrorism at its source, while defending at home.
Anthony Garrett
Falkland, Fife
• Josh Arnold-Foster (Response, 6 November) says people who “applaud our brave forces” also support the wars involved. Support for “our boys’ does not imply acquiescence to the follies of our leaders, but often quite the reverse.
Christine Fincham
Winchester, Hampshire
• If we have any hopes of a peaceful Olympics in 2012, we shall have to be out of Afghanistan long before.
Peter Moore
Newent, Gloucestershire

Well here we are, 11 years have passed since I became your mother-in-law and we are still speaking to each other as you approach your 40th birthday. We have survived the proverbial mother-in-law jokes.
I remember as if it was yesterday, the moment I set eyes on you, the thought popped into my mind “well, that’s my future son-in-law”. That good-looking Irish guy with a twinkle in his eye. My daughter had perhaps indicated by her rather restrained description of you that this was someone different. I was not prepared, however, for the shock that came when I realised that indeed she would be married and maybe I would be replaced on the scale of affection.
And how I loved, and still of course love, my daughter – maybe the fact that in the early 1970s I was the single mum who had broken with convention, when it was still the norm to marry to have children (how irritating it was in hospital to have the nurses insist on calling me Mrs!). No husband, no partner and on top of that a beautiful little girl who by her paternal parentage was of mixed race. We had a happy life: we laughed, we cried, we played and yes we fought, but our love was strong and beautiful … and then you came along.
It is difficult sharing. As a teacher I see the battles that go on as children learn to compromise. To share what they treasure is rarely easy, and for me perhaps that was the same. I shed not a tear at the wedding – perhaps it was the Irish party mood – but when I left you at the airport for you to fly to America with your lovely new wife, the tears started and only stopped two days later.
Now 11 years and three grandchildren later, how is it between us in-laws? I value the love you give to my daughter, I value the love you give to my three lively grandchildren, but more than that I value the fact that you have left the relationship between mother and daughter intact. My daughter and I have our disagreements, and indeed there have been times when we have fought bitterly: never once have you taken sides, but stepped back. Not out of cowardice but perhaps because you have recognised that what we have is special and it is not your place to interfere.
There are many aspects of your life that I worry about as you know: your stressful job, your lifestyle that means you are away so much, but on the other hand I realise selfishly that means I can have more time with my daughter. So we go on.
I hope you will be around when I am not, to nurture your wife, care for the children and to help fill the void that my going will, I think, leave. She will need you then, perhaps, more than ever before. I think we have done well, you and I, and I hope what we have is a mutual respect with a good dose of love thrown in so that can’t be bad!
Happy birthday, son (well, nearly)

Independent:

After reading Johann Hari’s article “Violence against gay people can and must be stopped” (4 November), I recalled my school days, not too long ago (15 years) when our humanities teacher raised the subject of homosexuality.
The lesson basically centred around the word “bumming”, at which point the class erupted into laughing and jeering. The teacher continued by suggesting there would be a “certain amount of bleeding” (more moans and cries). The subject was never again raised and all homos were disgraced. It was the lowest form of life.
I battled with my own feelings for years and finally came out of the closet aged 20. My parents try to talk about it but are obviously disappointed. “It’s your choice,” and, “If it makes you happy.” They are wrong on both counts. I was truly horrified when I realised I was gay, but there is absolutely nothing I can do to change it, and for this I am labelled as a perverted disgusting dirty queer.
There’s work to do yet, and sweeping the subject under the carpet at schools will have to stop.
Philip Steel
Leeds
As a gay man who has worked in several comprehensive schools in southern England and London, I have inevitably been asked on a number of occasions, “Are you gay?” During the last seven years, I have never once answered truthfully and simply said, “Yes, I am.” Instead, I have responded with something along the lines of: “What has that question got to do with our learning objective?”
Indeed, my gay status has never been directly related to the learning objective; however, this is not the real reason I sink into some degrading apologia for why such a question is “inappropriate” in the classroom. On reflection, I do not answer the question truthfully because I am afraid of the power my students may wield over me consequently. I am not ashamed of being gay, but I am ashamed that I cannot be who I am, in its totality, to the people I work very hard to teach.
I am sorrier that during my whole career, not a single student has come to me for help or advice upon thinking he or she might be gay. To them, I apologise for my cowardice.
John Jones
London E1
Can we ever win in Afghanistan?
We hear daily of the deaths of our young soldiers. We share the grief of their loved ones. We wonder again why we are in Afghanistan. We are unaware of any bomb a Taliban follower has ever brought to our shores while remembering the al-Qa’ida training camps and the implied threat of the damage they could bring about here.
We question the motives of the Taliban fighters, wondering if they seek only to see their country free of occupiers. We become less sure of the practicality of our mission to bring democracy to a country which everyday seems less inclined to embrace it. We question whether we have the will to pursue this conflict to the end. Will the indigenous Taliban fighters ever accept defeat, and if not will they simply return when we eventually, inevitably withdraw?
We hear Gordon Brown assure us that the danger to our homeland would increase immeasurably if we fail to engage the militants, yet we are aware of history and the many defeats suffered by protagonists in previous excursions into this arena.
We begin to wonder if Kim Howells is right – shore up homeland defences, use technology to contain the training camp threat, focus on identifying and educating those among us who consider revenge as the antidote to their frustration at our involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The British people have had their confidence in our politicians severely tested. We are confused, with every day bringing new questions as to whether our discredited political leaders are remotely close to finding a solution to the so-called War on Terror and where it will ultimately lead us.
David Wilson
Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire
For the last couple of years we have had senior Army officers and former ministers and others in the Nato task force in Afghanistan disparaging the campaign with messages to the effect that the Taliban are winning the war and that unless this or that is improved we will fail in our mission.
Don’t they understand that this type of talk just gives encouragement to the Taliban to keep up their efforts?
Tony Probert
Locking, North Somerset
We are told that the troops are in Afghanistan to free our streets from terrorists. But the London suicide bombers made clear in video messages that they acted in revenge for the invasion of Iraq. And these Islamists were born and bred in Yorkshire.
Bill Boyd
London SW16
Singing from the same hymn sheet
Richard Ingrams is complimentary about Catholic liturgy (31 October) but says convert Anglicans would miss their superior hymns, written to poems by George Herbert and others, as these are supplanted by a dreary collections in Catholic hymnals.
What great things Richard has yet to discover about the Catholic Church. The Divine Office, read by Catholic priests and people at the hours of every day, has a special poetry appendix at the back including several poems by Herbert, Hopkins, Eliot and Donne.
The late Fr Philip O’Dowd, the much-loved, Catholic chaplain of the University where I work, helped to compile the anthology in the 1970s while a seminarian in Rome. He chose George Herbert’s wonderful “The Call” for his own ordination.
Fr Philip’s choice of a non-dreary Catholic hymn-book called Laudate, for our 200-strong University chaplaincy congregation, means that I, an Anglican convert to Catholicism, get to belt out, every Sunday, on campus, many of the classics that Richard would enjoy, and others he would come to appreciate, such as Tim Dudley Smith’s “Lord for the Years” and Bob Hurd’s haunting setting of Psalm 41: “As the deer longs for running streams”. Come and join in any time Richard; we are already singing from your hymn sheet.
Liz Sockett
Nottingham
The perils of selling poppies
For the past 14 years, I have volunteered annually to sell poppies house-to-house in my area for the Royal British Legion, and have almost always found people willing to donate to this cause.
However, I was saddened, this year, to read the “Health and Safety Advice” given to collectors, which includes a warning to “work in close proximity with others, to reduce the risk of having your collecting box snatched”, and “If threatened by a member of the public, don’t put yourself at risk of personal injury.” Such warnings are not likely to encourage people who might volunteer to sell poppies.
Despite having been mugged on the New York subway in 1973 in broad daylight, I am not of a timid nature and will not allow myself to be intimidated by the implied danger in collecting for charity. It is a sad day indeed when volunteers even have to consider such possibilities.
Happily, I can report that I have this year mainly encountered friendly people willing to give to the cause, some indifference but no hostility, except for the grandmother who felt it necessary to scream at her young granddaughters “Never open the door to a stranger!” when faced with a middle-aged poppy seller. I hope her grandchildren will not grow up into fearful adults.
Janet Berridge
Canterbury
I always feel a little self-conscious wearing my poppy, because I know there are those who see it as a symbol of British glory or of “empire” or as a right-wing emblem or an establishment totem (Mark Steel, 4 November).
But it merely symbolises the place where so many died, alone, too young, in agony, in pitiable terror. The paradox of those delicate flowers thriving in the aftermath of what had been a noisy, fiery hell, is why the symbol is so powerful.
We mustn’t let the right wing take ownership of this, the most poignant and powerful of reminder of the ghastly folly of war and of the fragile beauty of life. This means that people like Mark Steel must wear a poppy.
Don’t sneer at the poppy. Wear it for the right reasons.
Tim Terry
London E14
Myth of the rich man’s parliament
The myth that cutting MP perks will lead to a Parliament full of rich people, as claimed by Denis MacShane (Opinion, 5 November) and others, needs dispelling.
Most of his Rotherham constituents, like mine, will survive very well on a £64,000 salary, travel costs paid and up to £15,000 to live in London. The image of MPs crying poverty over such amounts is much more unappetising to the voter in constituencies such as his and mine. If Denis MacShane intends to sleep on his office floor in a sleeping bag then I congratulate him, because the taxpayer will be £60,000 the better off in the next Parliament.
One benefit of the new system is that we might again see steelworkers standing to be Labour representatives in Parliament.
John Mann MP
(Lab, Bassetlaw), House of Commons
Denis MacShane states, “For five years, an MP is accountable to his or her constituents and to no one else.” However idealistic an MP may be on election, the lure of the greasy pole in the gift of the party machine corrupts all but a few.
And as for the poor female MP travelling home at one in the morning, it’s a fair bet that sitting behind her in second class will be a House of Commons female cleaner or waiter on minimum wage making the same journey every night. Perhaps if MPs have to live a little more like us (which post-Kelly, they may), they will know the problems we face and legislate accordingly.
Andrew Whyte
Shrewsbury
The fatuity of Denis MacShane’s diatribe against the Kelly report is illustrated when he complains that Labour MPs will have to live in boarding houses. Any MP will be able to rent a property. Rents will be reimbursable and there will never again be cause to suspect that MPs are using the expenses system for private gain. What is there to whinge about in that?
Michael Dempsey
London E1
Drug abuse
The letter (5 November) from John Rogers claiming outrage at Peter Stoker’s definition of an alcoholic has neatly made Mr Stoker’s point for him. Individuals who must have a glass of wine every lunchtime and every evening or those that must drink two pints of beer every day are indeed alcoholics. Perhaps this suggests why we should be worried about this most common form of drug abuse.
Philip Crowley
Southall, Middlesex
However much those of us who favour legalisation hammer the point that it is the criminalisation of drugs that causes our problems, some of your correspondents insist on making the argument that they are harmful. Of course they are harmful, but if people wish to harm themselves that is their privilege. Our problems arise from the desperate individual stealing to get his next fix and the drug barons who are his expensive source of supply. All this would cease if the government controlled purchase and distribution.
Pete Parkins
Lancaster
Votes for terror
Robert Fisk (4 November) thinks it unjust that Hamas won a “fair election in 2006″ and yet “were brutally punished for it”. The very fact that the election was fair is the reason that they must be punished. Hamas campaigned openly for a mandate to destroy the State of Israel, sponsored terrorism, encouraged and supported suicide bombers and broadcast vicious anti-Semitic lies. If the people of Gaza voted “fairly” for such a government, they deserve all they get.
Alan Halibard
Bet Shemesh, Israel
Our debt to Labour
Peter Metcalfe asks why people are livid with the Labour government (letter, 5 November). It is not because of the policies he listed, such as improvements in the NHS. The reason for the anger is that those policies were funded by government debt, to be repaid by the next generation of taxpayers. Labour persuaded the electorate to vote them into office by promising improved services, but decided not to go to the tiresome bother of ensuring that those same voters were the people who actually paid for the policies they voted for.
Michael Brice
Reading
Barack who?
Shaun Walker (Life, 4 November) set out to see how many out of 20 youngsters in the rarefied atmosphere of Turkmenistan could name the President of the USA, and only found one who thought she knew and was about right. Interesting for somebody, I feel, to try the same on the streets of south London. I fear the result will be little different.
Graham Feakins
London SE24

Times:

Sir, Melanie Reid is right to remove much of the blame from the young man caught haplessly on camera while on a night out in Sheffield (Opinion, Nov 5). Freshers activities have been part and parcel of life in university towns and cities up and down the country for years and very few people would begrudge them their moments of, mostly, harmless fun. Even if cheap alcohol were not available or if event organisers did not exist, people still want to party with the inevitable occasional risk of such incidents as that reported.
The greater shame is that other persons should choose to take or obtain pictures and then distribute them such that they become widespread public property. Irrespective of the spoiling of the memorial, this is too harsh a price to pay for a moment’s indiscretion; the incident was being appropriately dealt with by the courts and that is where it should have stayed. At best you could conclude that the old sayings of “not gloating over other people’s misfortunes” or “there but by the grace of God go I” have been forgotten and, at worst, that the circulation of the pictures was an act of unmitigating cruelty.
Clive Hall
Sandown, Isle of Wight
Sir, Melanie Reid is quite wrong to state that “no punishment the judge can dish out to Philip Laing can make his situation any more dreadful than it is”. As the adjutant of a regiment based in Sheffield, I am responsible for the parade in Barker’s Pool this Remembrance Sunday, the location of the cenotaph upon which Laing urinated. If the judge were to agree, I could arrange a session of military corrective training, run by my regimental sergeant major and assisted by Mr Fred Powell (veteran of the 4th Army in Burma and chair of the Sheffield Ex-Servicemens’ Association). Make it about 1045hrs and I can also guarantee an audience of about 2,000.
I. G. Thompson
Adjutant, 38 Signal Regiment (V)
Sir, It is utterly disingenuous of Melanie Reid to state “show me a parent of one of today’s students who did not get hopelessly drunk as a teenager as a rite of passage, and I will show you a liar”. It is precisely the thinking behind this kind of statement that leads people to think that excessive drinking at some point in life is absolutely the norm. My husband, my father, my son and myself have all been through university without ever having been remotely drunk. To be called “liars” perpetuates the myth that “everyone does it”. This myth is a large part of the problem in young people feeling unable to say no to the pressure to over-drink.
Pam Davies
Coventry

Sir, So Sir Christopher Kelly says that MPs should no longer employ family members (reports, Nov 5 and Nov 6). If, as is common in other sectors, the jobs are advertised nationally, the best candidates are shortlisted and interviewed by a panel (including someone from outside the MP’s office), and the job is awarded to the person who best meets the job specification, then who are we to argue if, coincidentally, the MP’s spouse happens to fulfil the job criteria better than anyone else?
Or is that not how recruitment works in Westminster?
Dr Susie Henley
London N17

Sir, Were Ed Balls to insist that 15-year-olds should receive a year’s sex education based on the ethics of Christians, Jews and Muslims (report, Nov 6), he might be surprised to find that he had gone some way in achieving his targets of the reduction both in the number of sexually transmitted diseases and a decline in unwanted teenage pregnancies.
Ged Ackerley
Telford, Shropshire
Sir, If the reason for compulsory sex education is the undesirable number of teenage pregnancies, Mr Balls is leaving it rather late to start such lessons at 15. Twelve might be more appropriate.
Robert Rhodes, QC
London WC2

Sir, Further to the suggestion that the M1 could be increased by building another motorway on top (letter, Nov 4), an alternative idea would be to build the high-speed rail link to the North (HS2) on top of the M1-M6-M74. This route links London to Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool and Glasgow/Edinburgh. At the London end it could be built over the Midland Line and through new tunnels to reach St Pancras station, where it could terminate over the Eurostar platforms. This plan would reduce land take to a minimum and could be built using mass-produced standardised components, thus greatly reducing costs compared with building a conventional railway.
Robin Linsley
Hemel Hempstead, Herts

Telegraph:

SIR – I wish David Cameron and politicians of all colours, would open a proper debate over whether we want a looser European Union or the United States of Europe.
Although I’d vote against the latter, it would surely be better to discuss openly the possibility rather than suffer the current game of Grandmother’s Footsteps, where integration enthusiasts try to impose political union by stealth, while denying it every time we turn to look.
Tom Bell-Richards
Burford, Oxfordshire
SIR – By giving us a say in our future relationship with Europe, David Cameron will inspire trust in his leadership, unify his party, satisfy voters and have a powerful mandate from the country behind him.
By not giving us our say, he would emulate Tony Blair and Gordon Brown and lose our trust as more powers are ceded to Europe. Why then would we need Parliament – to sign off MPs’ expenses?
Trevor Jones
Treasurer, West Chiltington Conservative Association
West Chiltington, West Sussex
SIR – Our European neighbour states, which support traditional liberal Western culture without apology, are more likely to defend these values than cynical British governments, which have permitted unskilled immigration from outside the European Union.
Labour calculated that these grateful economic migrants would be good voting fodder. I see more spine in France, Germany and the Netherlands supporting common civilised values than in Britain.
Dr Adrian Crisp
Great Abington, Cambridgeshire
SIR – A Sovereignty Act (Leading article, November 5) is essential, but it would be “phoney” if it did not provide for the overriding of the European Communities Act 1972. Following the precedent of the Referendum Act 1975, we must allow voters to express their views on the following question: “Should the United Kingdom renegotiate the terms of its relationship within the European Union?”
This is not “in or out”.
If we do not follow principle, we will be merely managing Britain as agents for the EU, and not acting as a democracy, in line with the wishes of the electorate.
Bill Cash MP (Con)
London SW1
SIR – Would one of your correspondents so angry with Mr Cameron explain how voting for Ukip will help their cause to save what remains of our sovereignty?
It would lead to the election of more Euro-enthusiastic Labour and Liberal Democrat MPs. Is there some sort of death-wish involved?
Dr Barry Moyse
Bridgwater, Somerset
The cost of Afghanistan
SIR – We have no more right to be in Afghanistan than America had in Vietnam. A more inefficient and costly means of protecting this country from terrorism is difficult to imagine.
Peter R. Fisher
Nairn
SIR – Our commitment both to Europe and Afghanistan would be strengthened if our European allies were seen to be taking a fairer share in carrying the burdens of the Nato commitment.
Col Gordon Mills (retd)
Plymouth, Devon
SIR – In 2003, Tony Blair committed Britain to war on Iraq on a fabricated justification. In 2009, Gordon Brown flies in the face of increasing public opinion that Afghanistan is not a worthwhile cause.
In 1802, Thomas Paine, writing about the second US president, John Adams, said: “It has been the political career of this man to begin with hypocrisy, proceed with arrogance, and finish in contempt.”
The same can now be said of Messrs Blair and Brown.
R.P. Draper
Burgess Hill, West Sussex
SIR – If Mr Brown starts to talk about the possibility of failure in Afghanistan, the blame should be laid at his door, first through his parsimony towards the Armed Forces as Chancellor, then through his dithering lack of leadership as PM.
David Booth
Dunfermline, Fife
Coolie Britannia
SIR – In an interview with Gerard Donovan (Television, November 6) I said that I was interested in the role of the “Chinese coolies” in clearing up First World War battlefields.
I wrongly suggested that Winston Churchill got involved in a row about their treatment, confusing this with an earlier parliamentary debate about “coolies” elsewhere. The result was nonsense.
Ian Hislop
London W1
Don’t bank on it
SIR – How’s this for an own goal? At Manchester airport a succession of large advertisements read: “RBS banking. You deserve better.”
Michael Nicholson
Grayswood, Surrey
The Olympics will not leave Greenwich Park ruined
SIR – Greenwich Park is of great historical importance, which is why we intend to return it to its original condition after the Olympics and why we are working with the Royal Parks, English Heritage and Natural England to do so.
Detailed surveys have been undertaken in recent months to ensure that sensitive areas, including trees, archaeology, and wildlife, are protected. These surveys form part of our planning application, which will be submitted at the end of the month.
We are happy to discuss our plans with the Garden History Society (Gardening, October 24), which has been invited to several of our consultative meetings.
Jackie Brock-Doyle
The London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games and Paralympic Games
London E14

Irish Times:

Quotas for female politicians
Madam, – Senator Ivana Bacik proposes that political parties should be obliged to “impose a maximum limit on the proportion of candidates of any one gender selected to run in elections at local, national and European levels” in order to end the “masculine image of politics” (Home News and Breaking News, November 5th). A cursory analysis of the 2007 general election shows that any such imposition would be a gross distortion of the electoral process.
The electorate comprises 51 per cent women, yet only 23 female TDs were elected (14 per cent of the total). Ms Bacik’s report seems to suggest that this disparity is due to a lack of female candidates, but this is patently not the case.
A total of 58 female candidates were unsuccessful in 2007 – 21 of whom represented one of the three major parties, and 24 others represented the smaller political parties. A total of six sitting female TDs lost their seats. Why should these candidates be given preferential treatment over other (male) candidates who had more support among the electorate? And why should the political parties be forced to run more female candidates, when the electorate chose to reject such large numbers of the candidates they did select? Female voters comprise a majority of the electorate, and had they chosen to do so, there were a sufficient number of candidates to elect 81 women to the Dáil – yet this did not happen. This glaring fact is omitted from Senator Bacik’s report.
The gender inequality in Irish politics is not brought about by the lack of will among political parties to nominate female candidates, but by the seeming unwillingness of the Irish electorate (including a large majority of women voters) to vote for them.
Senator Bacik should devote the time and resources of the Oireachtas Committee on Justice to exploring the reasons for this fundamental problem, rather than wasting them on the politically correct window-dressing contained in her report. – Yours etc,
BARRY WALSH,
Brooklawn,
Clontarf,
Dublin 3.
Leaving Ireland’s ‘bankrupt’ shores
Madam, – I wasn’t overly privileged, yet through luck and hard work I have third-level qualifications. I would like to stay in the country of my birth. I would like a job. I am trying damn hard to get one. And I fully empathise with those of my peers who have expressed their disillusionment with the mismanagement of this country that has resulted in so many of us being left in the lurch, and most especially with those who are obliged to emigrate because of this cold reality; after all, I may yet be joining them.
And while I have met quite a few people in recent times who have lost their jobs, I have met none delighted by that fact. And I am absolutely disgusted with the attitude of John Moran (November 5th), writing from Saudi Arabia about those who are, he claims, unwilling to find “worthwhile work even in the middle of a depression”.
Many of us are spending our days trying to do precisely that. Perhaps Mr Moran might return to impart to us his wisdom? He claims “they will not be missed if they don’t bother to come back”. Writing from Riyadh, how is he supposed to notice whether they do or not?
Nobody owes me a living: in this country or anywhere else. Mr Moran says “good riddance” to many of us. Many of us who are trying to do the best we can in the midst of this recession might say something similar to him. – Yours, etc,
JOHN GIBNEY,
Priory Road,
Harold’s Cross,
Dublin 6W.
Retired teachers’ role as substitutes
Madam, – I strongly object to retired teachers being demonised in the media recently because, in the past they provided substitute cover for absent teachers and in some cases may continue to do so.
There is nothing unprofessional in the provision of substitute cover for absent teachers. What is unprofessional is government failing to make sure that only qualified teachers are allowed to teach.
There has never been a proper supply panel from which to provide cover for teachers who are absent. If there were, regular employment could be provided at no extra cost for most, if not all, teachers without work.
People who blame retired teachers in this way have little or no understanding of the system. This, or else they are just mischievous and have some interest – political or otherwise – in shifting the spotlight from those who are really to blame.
Let everyone be clear why many young teachers are without work this year. There is a significant surplus of teachers because promises to reduce class sizes were broken and services to special needs children and newcomer children have been delayed or abandoned. A thousand jobs were taken out of the system at primary level. A thousand teachers are unemployed.
The Retired Teachers’ Association of Ireland has no difficulty with young unwaged teaching graduates being employed as a priority where substitute or other work is available. Equally, there will still be the need for retired teachers to work casually at times and in areas where no unwaged teachers are available until a comprehensive supply system is established. – Yours, etc,
DENIS DESMOND,
National Secretary,
Retired Teachers’ Association of Ireland,
Carlton Court,
Swords, Co Dublin.
New-age newspaper reader
Madam, – Good for Aidan Murphy (November 4th) and other readers who get The Irish Timesvia Kindle. However, I wonder what will become of those traditional uses for newspapers: lining the budgie’s cage and the cat’s litter tray, making a paper hat to wear when painting the ceiling and putting under the lino to be discovered (and laughed at) in years to come? Indeed the device, in spite of its name, wouldn’t even be much help in lighting the fire. – Yours, etc,
PATRICIA DALY,
Home Farm Road,
Drumcondra, Dublin 9.
Whether or not to wear a poppy
Madam, – Your correspondents who have sought a peace symbol poppy, or referred to white poppies in the 1930s, can be advised that white poppies are readily available in Britain (produced by the Peace Pledge Union) but alas, there is no current distributor in Ireland.
Each year we distribute information on the availability of the white poppy as a symbol of remembrance of all those who have died in war, and as a symbol of a commitment to work against war and its causes.
People wear red poppies for many different reasons, some simply celebrating the defeat of fascism in the second World War. However, and particularly in the UK context including the North, there is a way in which the red poppy, and Remembrance Day, are co-opted as support for whatever wars Britain may be fighting at the time, eg Afghanistan currently. This kind of co-option is not acceptable to those who wish to build peace by nonviolent means. It is also barely credible that BBC Northern Ireland presenters are obliged to wear red poppies at this time of year if they want to work. – Yours, etc,
ROB FAIRMICHAEL,
Co-ordinator,
INNATE (Irish Network for Nonviolent Action Training and Education),
Ravensdene Park,
Belfast.
Immigrant myths
Madam, – William Reville’s smashing of the myth that immigrants get preferential treatment from our welfare system is indeed welcome (Science Today, November 5th). He is also right to point out that those seeking asylum in Ireland, people who are not permitted to work, are housed in special hostels and get a small weekly allowance to cover their needs. The amount in question is even less than reported. It is €19.10 per week, a sum that has not increased since it was set in 2000. – Yours, etc,
NOELINE BLACKWELL,
Director General,
Free Legal Advice Centres Ltd,
Lower Dorset Street,
Dublin 1.
Men-only ruling for golf club
Madam, – How much taxpayers’ money has the Equality Authority spent fighting the Portmarnock case? And how much has it spent trying to give men access to all-women associations? Shouldn’t the word “equality” stand for something? – Yours, etc,
WILLIAM MONGEY,
Ard Haven,
Waterford.
Rezoning plan at Fernhill
Madam, – I wish to refer to an inaccuracy in the article “Rezoning Plan for Heritage Garden” (Home News, November 5th). For the record, there is no proposal to rezone any part of Fernhill Gardens for housing.
The proposal concerns a 60-acre site on the Fernhill Estate. It is proposed to secure the 33 acres associated with Fernhill Gardens in perpetuity through a number of initiatives, all of which will add to the amenity value of the gardens for ordinary people. This proposal safeguards Fernhill Gardens. Housing will be considered on a separate associated site. While the report indicates that the Minister for the Environment may intervene, it should also be noted that the Minister for Tourism has written in support of the initiative. – Yours, etc,
Cllr JIM O’LEARY,
Parkvale,
Dundrum,
Dublin 16.
Long night for ‘urine warders’?
Madam, – In order to deter or apprehend people who might feel the urge to indulge in the disgusting habit of urinating in public, would the proposed “urine warders” in Ennis (Home News, November 5th) be obliged to patrol the streets of the town from midnight into the wee hours of the morning? – Yours, etc,
PAUL DELANEY,
Beacon Hill,
Dalkey, Co Dublin.
Casting light on Cumann na mBan
Madam, – I am a young historian doing a research project at the University of Vienna titled “Cumann na mBan in the Provisional Republican Movement 1969-1986”.
As far as I know most of the printed material is in private hands. I would like to ask readers who have any material about Cumann na mBan from this time period to please get in contact with me.
The role of Cumann na mBan during this period is sadly missing in the history books of the so-called “Troubles”. This research project aims to throw light on the role of these republican women and give them their deserved place in history.
I can be contacted by e-mail on dieter.reinisch@gmx.net or by post (address below). – Yours, etc,
DIETER REINISCH,
Leopoldsgasse 51/5,
1020 Vienna,
Austria.

Well I must be off

best wishes John

Andy

November 6, 2009 by johnblakey

Andy 6 December 2009

Andy comes, finally, to do the lights, I think there is not much point having a light if it doesn’t work. I start to sweep up the leaves. They are numerous pops and bang, for it is the 5th of November Guy Fawkes day. The cats are nervous and skitter about a lot taking refuge. I’ll be glad when it is all over.
I start to sweep up the leaves. Scrape and bag, scrape and bag, five scrapes and the bag is full. It threatens to rain. I am not sure if I want it to rain or not. If it does rain then I am freed from the necessity of bagging the leaves. On the other hand I have only done a bout 2 square meters. Two bags fifty eight to go. Fluff thinking she is invisible hovers under the hedge, watching me, and trembling a little whenever there is a particularly loud bang. Andy chats away, his little dog is terrified of the bangs too.
Finally it is all over and I drop Mary off to see Joan and pick up Shanti to take her to her blood pressure check. She is to have a biopsy, taken from one of her lymph nodes without anesthetic, she is quite concerned. She has also been offered a swine flu jab, but does not know whether to have it not. I haven’t been offered a swine flu jab. I point out that she would bitterly regret not taking the jab if she subsequently caught swine flu and it was particularly bad.
I sit and wait in the car park at the doctor’s surgery people come and go the sky lowers and rain threatens to fall. At last she is back and its off to Tesco for shopping. She is very slow at shopping but does not want me to do it for her. It is her job not mine. So I sit and watch the raindrops running down the windscreen and the people scurrying in and out of Tesco’s supermarket. At last a doleful figure appears pushing two shopping trollies and wiping the rain from her eyes. I jump out and put the shopping in the car, and we go and pick up Mary.
Mary has been with Joan for an hour and Joan’s mind is wandering, something about the south coast of the Mediterranean which she thinks she can see from her bedroom window. We assure her that she can’t. Joan, so lucid and clear one moment and then off on a tangent. King Charles the Second syndrome nods Mary from Dickens.
The council bonfire is as large as a house the park fenced off and the stage set and a rumbling of awful music permeates the house. I think they are trying to strangle a cat quietly. The rain falls down on the bonfire, I can’t help being pleased in a minor sort of way, I hope this does not go on all night.

Postcards

Postcrossing card from Mexico: Diana the Huntress fountain
http://www.flickr.com/photos/emperordalek/4077518047/

Burnham on Sea, Somerset, England
http://www.flickr.com/photos/emperordalek/4077520963/

Statue of Liberty, New York, USA
http://www.flickr.com/photos/emperordalek/4077522361/

Eastbourne Multi view, Eastbourne, England
http://www.flickr.com/photos/emperordalek/4077523763/

Bedfordshire heritage collectors card: Oakley, Thurleigh, Kempston, Clapham
http://www.flickr.com/photos/emperordalek/4077525041/

Rhossili Bay, Gower, Wales
http://www.flickr.com/photos/emperordalek/4078279476/

Obituary: Denys Tucker: zoologist

Denys Tucker was a brilliant if maverick zoologist and principal scientific officer at the British Museum (Natural History) — at the Natural History Museum in South Kensington — for 11 years until June 1960 when he was summarily dismissed for “long, continued, vexatious, insubordinate and generally offensive conduct towards the museum’s director and other senior staff”. He was 39.
He spent the next seven years in legal challenges to the decision, taking the matter to the High Court and the Court of Appeal as well as having his case raised by his MP in the House of Commons. But it was all to no avail and despite making 100 or so applications in the ensuing years for jobs of one kind and another he never worked again. A gifted but contrary zoologist and taxonomic ichthyologist, he remained defiant to the end.
By his own admission, Denys Tucker was born of humble origins, the only child of a church brass engraver and a shoemaker’s daughter. He was brought up in Exeter and won a scholarship to that city’s Hele’s School, where he was secretary of the school’s natural history society and editor of its magazine. In 1939, at 18, he was awarded a gold medal by the Zoological Society of London, the presentation being made by Julian Huxley, its Secretary. The following year he won an open scholarship in zoology to University College of the South-West, where he read marine ecology with botany.
From 1940-42 he was a member of the Home Guard and a firewatcher on the roof of the university building during the “Baedeker” air raids. His degree course was then interrupted by war service from 1942 to 1946 with the RAF in India where he rose to the rank of flight lieutenant.
On being demobilised he completed his degree, after which he was a research assistant in the Department of Zoology, University of Liverpool, where he worked on ecology and the reproduction of marine molluscs.
In 1949 he joined the staff of the Natural History Museum, and he worked his way up to become in 1958 principal scientific officer, curating and researching the taxonomy and biology of marine fishes, especially deep-sea species. In that year he was awarded a DSc by London University.
The coelacanth, the primitive marine bony fish thought to be extinct until a living specimen was discovered in 1938, was one of his early interests. But he also became absorbed by the freshwater eel and wrote an article for the journal Nature in 1959 in which he challenged the long-held belief that all freshwater eels spawned in the Sargasso Sea. It caused a furore.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article6905054.ece

Letters:

Guardian:

Article history
We welcome chief schools adjudicator Ian Craig’s report endorsing this council’s use of random allocation as a fair way to deal with oversubscribed school places (Watchdog’s report, 3 November). Our previous system of using home-to-school distance as the tie-breaker was very unpopular because the geographical spread of our secondary schools meant parents in whole areas of the city were unable to access a school near to them. The catchment system we now use, with random allocation as tie-breaker, is fairer. Another key advantage is transparency: people know where they stand when they fill in their preference forms and are not trying to second-guess demand for particular schools. The number of people getting one of their three preferred schools has increased, and there has been no increase in the number of appeals. We’re not saying our system will work everywhere. But we’re convinced it’s the right solution for our city.
Cllr Vanessa Brown

No marking of the pioneering effort that was the M1 (Report, 3 November) is complete without mention of the extraordinary engineer and designer Sir Owen Williams. His office surveyed the entire route, drew up the masterplan and created the tender package. Williams designed every bridge, viaduct and culvert in phase 1 and 2 – about 250 structures. The elegant bridges, in particular, have become part of the image of Britain. Williams also designed well-loved architecture including the original Wembley stadium and the Dorchester Hotel.
Chris Rogers
Edgware, Middlesex
•  I wish it was said more loudly in the debate about faith schools, including by the Church of England’s chief education officer (Letters, 3 November), that Church of England schools were founded to provide education for local children in the name of the church, not to provide advantage for Anglican families. It is perfectly possible to frame an admissions policy that pays proper regard to religious affiliation, while also retaining a clear proportion of places for local children, regardless of faith considerations.
Rev Philip Welsh
St Stephen with St John, Westminster
• If we want equality of outcomes from our schools (The problem with equal opportunity for all, G2, 5 November) we must bite the bullet and fund schools inversely according to their results.
Rod Bramald
Morpeth, Northumberland
• The banner of Historians Against the Bomb saying “We demand a continuing supply of history” (Letters, 4 November) appeared at the event celebrating Phil Jeffries (Obituaries, 13 February), where he was credited with devising the slogan.
Michael Edwards
The Bartlett School, UCL
• Since William Shawcross’s hagiography of the Queen Mother is over 1,000 pages, Alexander Chancellor (G2, 2 November) must be unique in asking for more detail.
Roland Bates
London
• ”Barn dances” (Letters, 4 November), more accurately “Barnes dances”, were named after Henry Barnes, who popularised them in the US from the late 1940s.
Henning Sieverts

In response to Councillor Richard Brett (Letters, 4 November), refuse collectors in Leeds did not resort to strike action lightly, but because they saw their income and livelihood threatened. Despite eight weeks of the strike, with the mess piling up on our streets and bins overflowing, the refuse workers have the backing of the majority of the city: a concert to raise money for the striking workers has been matched by practical support on the picket line.
While other councils up and down the country have used equal-pay legislation to raise the pay of the lowest paid – often female workers – Leeds city council, led by Brett’s Lib Dem-Tory coalition, has turned equal pay into a political ploy, aimed at privatising this essential public service. Cllr Brett talks of “notional losers” in Leeds’s review of 21,000 jobs. It is hard to fathom how he could describe a reduction of £4,500 from an £18,000 salary “notional”. The council’s last offer did offer bonuses to top up the vastly reduced salaries, but based on unrealistic targets. Leeds will not stand for unjust cuts in wages motivated by a gross distortion of equal-pay legislation. Instead we want a council that can stand up and support people in the recession.
Rachel Reeves
Labour prospective parliamentary candidate, Leeds West
• As I and colleagues were negotiating with Nottinghamshire county council over proposals to cut staff holidays and other conditions to save £3m, Alistair Darling was promising the banks another £38bn. This scenario will be replicated in every council in the country in the coming months, with frontline public services and staff conditions slashed to pay for this largesse to the bankers. A small proportion of this bailout cash could prevent any cuts. By the time everyone wakes up to the reality, it will be too late and, as usual, it will be the most deprived who will suffer the most.
Mike Scott

David Blunkett’s comparisons between the expenses post-Kelly of an MP and a senior civil servant are highly misleading (Comment, 5 November). The civil servant called down to London would be booked into a standard hotel with a small cash amount to spend on a meal, and limits less than those being recommended by Christopher Kelly. Civil service expenses are modest and stand fair comparison with any in parliament or outside, which is no doubt one of the reasons Kelly was asked to conduct this review. Moreover, senior civil servants often work hours as long and demanding, including at weekends, as any MP.
The MPs’ pension arrangements remain the most generous in the public sector and the rare civil servant who receives a pension greater than an MP’s salary will have worked for a lifetime in public service. Commons staff also have to be present for late-evening sittings and have never received second home allowances; instead, there is a sensible arrangement to cover travel home by taxi if public transport has ceased. David Blunkett was a member of a government that persistently ignored the need to set a fair salary for MPs. A price is now being paid. He is right to stress the importance of support for MPs from modest backgrounds, but claiming that MPs are hard done by compared with civil servants is nonsense. It is disappointing that a former minister does not appear to understand this.
Jonathan Baume
General secretary, First Division Association
• Your editorial (5 November) is incisive and balanced, but Michael White regurgitates the new parliamentary myth that the new system favours rich candidates. There is no evidence whatsoever for this. The new cheaper system means that local candidates are much more likely to be attracted and selected. Away from the chattering classes in London, £64,000 is a very good salary, especially when travel costs and up to £15,000 for living expenses are added. In the real world people are scratching their heads at the mindset of MPs, and for Labour party representatives to wallow in self-pity is particularly unedifying.
John Mann MP
Bassetlaw, Nottinghamshire
• By describing MPs as “our employees” you propagate the error at the root of public misunderstanding of an MP’s role. Employees are people who act under the direction of someone else. MPs are our representatives, sent to parliament to use their judgment as to how to represent us, subject only to the sanction of not being re-elected. A suitable solution would be for the public to recognise that being represented by an MP costs about £200k in salary, expenses and staff costs, to pay that sum without further quibbling, and then to accept their own responsibility to judge MPs’ performance at election times.
John Hall
Bristol

It is perhaps both alarming and predictable that it has taken the intervention of France’s Europe minister to bring the Conservative party’s position on Europe to the fore (France: ‘autistic Tories castrated UK’, 5 November). The French position makes it clear that the Conservatives are misguided, reactionary and engaging in damaging political posturing. So how is it to be explained? The simple answer is that the party remains wracked by indecision and division over Europe and that Cameron is following a long line of Conservative leaders in talking tough on Europe for political gain.
Yet there is potentially a more insidious aspect to Cameron’s position. In talking tough on Europe, he is coming dangerously close to the language used by both the BNP and Ukip on this issue – pandering to political extremism, isolationism and petty nationalism. To this degree, the Conservatives are following generations of the debate on immigration and asylum, with politicians mainstreaming arguments which should be marginalised. It is time to reject such approaches and to acknowledge that, while the EU is not perfect, Britain’s best interests are served by operating at its heart.
Dr Nick Robinson
Lecturer in EU public policy, University of Leeds
• The Guardian’s very full coverage of Cameron’s “pitiful” unveiling of Tory policy on Europe (Editorial, 5 November) properly reflects the political significance of his embarrassment over the Lisbon treaty and the rejection of the European People’s Party group in favour of a group of minor rightwing parties in Europe.
By contrast the BBC’s flagship evening news on Wednesday did not report on Cameron’s response until 20 minutes into the programme. The coverage was comparatively slight and lacked any of the forensic analysis and critical glee that duly attends any embarrassment on the government side.
There is a temptation to fear that in some respects the BBC News editorial approach is somewhat cowed when it comes to looking at Tory policy. I wonder whether you had that in mind when you juxtaposed an inset into your Cameron’s Europe Crisis report a piece (Medi
a messages, 5 November) on how the Tory leader threatens to “rein in” the BBC while giving more licence to Murdoch’s media empire.
Roger Truelove
Sittingbourne, Kent
•  Mr Cameron’s Tories cry foul at the lack of consultation before the Lisbon treaty was ratified – but where was their concern for Britons’ approval when China joined the World Trade Organisation? Why weren’t we asked before BA, BP, BT and the rest were privatised? And what is their excuse for ignoring UK public opinion when Tony Blair took us to war?
All these events had – and will continue to have – far profounder effects on our lives than the Lisbon treaty.
The Tories’ anger is disingenuous. It panders to the Little Englandism among their members and as they cosy up to the ultra-rightists in the European parliament, they will indeed “castrate” the British position and further isolate our point of view from important decision-making in Europe.
Eurof Thomas
Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates
•  It is possible to be globally outward-looking and patriotically British. As Churchill observed after the second world war, our best path lay in going forward with our European neighbours. Under the current 27 EU nations this now numbers almost half a billion in population, a good third more than the US. How potentially great is that?
The Hague–Cameron extremist pact would do well to remember that our British historical roots, in the main, derive from a melange of European tribes – from the Celts and Anglo-Saxons to the Danes and Normans. But Eurosceptic MPs and MEPs will have us all sidelined as little islanders ranting and raving, snapping and sniping at our brothers. Never forget that western democratic ideals were pan-European from the days of ancient Greece through to the French revolution and Britain’s universal suffrage.
Roz Denny
Fittleworth, West Sussex
•  For Pierre Lellouche to compare thousands of the most innocent, honest and straightforward members of society to the compromised, corrupt and institutionally opportunist Conservative party is breathtakingly offensive. I sincerely hope he is not reflecting the attitudes of M Sarkozy, and I call on him to apologise.
S Clarke
Cambridge
•  The Tories most certainly have lost power and influence in the European parliament since leaving the largest group in the European parliament, and it is absurd for Timothy Kirkhope, leader of the British Tory MEPs (Letters, 3 November), to pretend otherwise.
A major British interest currently on the EU agenda is the reform of financial services regulations, yet the Tories could not get a place on the parliament’s financial crisis committee. Their new European Conservatives and Reformists Group is not even united on an issue as fundamental as the Lisbon treaty: group leader Michal Kaminski supports it.
By disowning the EU, the Tories and their allies are only able to claim a place at formal European parliament meetings where their views are ignored anyway. A delegation as large as the British Conservatives should expect far more influence in the parliament than one committee chair.
The Tories want to be seen as serious politicians, able to tackle the huge problems of climate change, global poverty and trade, yet they have withdrawn from their alliance with some of the leading European partners, to throw their lot with a motley crew of politicians of little import. This new Tory creation, the ECR group, is destined to be short-lived and to have little impact, and will mainly serve to paper over Tory divisions over Europe.
Glenis Willmott MEP

Independent:

David Cameron’s pledges to pass laws to make further loss of sovereignty to the EU impossible without a referendum and to enshrine in British law the superiority of British law are naive at best and dishonest at worst.
Unless Britain is given a written constitution which can only be changed by referendum, nothing will prevent a future government repealing any ordinary law guaranteeing a referendum. The embodying of British law as superior is an absurdity as EU law is already legally superior.
The only way we can be masters in our own house to withdraw unilaterally.
Robert Henderson
London NW1
I had always thought that once a general election returns a government, that government has been mandated by the public to take decisions on its behalf. I do not see why referendums should ever be necessary.
If the Conservative Party wants to run on a platform of taking the UK out of the EU – or at least ensuring that the UK remains the sick parrot of Europe – and they get voted in, the voters will get the government they deserve.
But if the newly elected government really does not have the courage to take decisions unaided, by all means have a referendum – along with others on continued membership of Nato, the war in Afghanistan, the monarchy and proportional representation.
Dave Skinner
Tervuren, Belgium
I am interested to know exactly what kind of democracy S Dandy thinks we must wave goodbye to now that the Lisbon Treaty has been ratified (letter, 5 November).
Is it a democracy where the decision whether to go to war, or when to hold a general election, is taken by a single person? Where a political party can win a “landslide” after only 24 per cent of the electorate votes for it? Or a democracy where the executive may not pass legislation that breaches human rights, where the Parliament – voted in under proportional representation – gains power, and where the legislature is legally bound to address any issue that it is petitioned on by a significant number of citizens? The latter is the democracy we will enjoy as members of the EU under the Lisbon Treaty.
Andrew T Barnes
Bristol
Let MPs have one home – in London
Denis MacShane (5 November) says that until 30 years ago, it was accepted that MPs would be London-based and make occasional fleeting visits to their constituencies. Would a return to this be altogether a bad thing? MPs are elected to a national parliament to debate issues of national or international importance. Local matters should be the concern of local council members.
My grandfather, J R Leslie, JP, MP, served from 1935 until Labour was overturned in 1950, as Labour Party member for Sedgefield. (Rumblings thereabouts are due to his turning in his grave as his shade contemplates the doings of a later incumbent.)
Upon election he moved to a modest house in Muswell Hill, north London, just as most people would move to where their job was to be. From there he commuted to Westminster by bus and Underground. He would return to the constituency, by train, for occasional weekends and longer in the vacations. From my childhood recollections, I believe that he was then accommodated by one of his constituents; what is certain that he used modest accommodation and would never have thought of needing two homes. That he was re-elected several times indicates that his constituents were satisfied with these arrangements.
I believe that the recent growth of the idea of constituency MP as local trouble-shooter militates both against the attention of Parliament to strategic concerns and against true local autonomy.
Ian Leslie
Ludlow, Shropshire
Steve Richards, in his article of 3 November, criticises Sir Thomas Legg for trying to impose “retrospective” limits on certain aspects of MPs’ claims. I do not believe that there is a significant element of retrospection in his suggestions. The following are two extracts from the 2006 version of the Green Book which sets the rules.
“Members themselves are responsible for ensuring that their use of allowances is above reproach.”
“It is your responsibility to satisfy yourself when you submit a claim, or authorise payments from your staffing allowance, that any expenditure claimed from the allowances has been wholly, exclusively and necessarily incurred for the purpose of performing your Parliamentary duties.”
Clearly some (but far from all) members have failed to meet the first of these, and others the second. It therefore does not seem unreasonable for Sir Thomas to make a decision on what level of allowances would have been “above reproach”, and then to ask for repayment of any excess.
What seems worse to me is that a number of MPs, having spotted “errors” (which in a normal business would be regarded as fraudulent) when they were checking their claims before publication, seem to think that by repaying these they can get off scot free.
Pat Johnston
Fourstones, Northumberland
The Kelly proposals for changed rules on MPs’ expenses will do nothing to restore the electorate’s trust in politicians. Trust is earned by honest behaviour in the face of temptation. If the opportunities for dishonesty are limited by tighter supervision and temptation is removed by the imposition of unambiguous rules, the scope for politicians to demonstrate their trustworthiness is reduced, not enhanced.
We may be pleased that our MPs are costing us less than they were, and satisfied that they are being punished, but we will have no more reason to trust them than before.
David Whitaker
Wokingham, Berkshire
In response to John Hawgood (letter, 3 November), I don’t know about a “euro for the Guy” but I have just passed two young boys who were asking for “50p for our MP”. Just in case you didn’t quite get their message, the stuffed clothes that made up their pride and joy were clutching a large piece of paper with the words “Expenses Claim” boldly written on it.
David Kreikmeier-Watson
London EC1
Set schools free of government
So “3,000 parents lie or bend the rules” to get their child into their chosen school – or perhaps keep their child out of a less desirable school (report, 3 November).
All this really tells us is that the once much-vaunted “parental choice” is a myth: some schools are better than others, and parents know it, but not all can access the good ones. Parents who try to do the best for their children should be rewarded, not criminalised.
If we were setting up a national education service today, we would certainly not choose politicians as the people to run it. Let us close the Department for Education and Skills (or whatever its name is this week), give the schools back their independence, and distribute the education budget in the form of vouchers.
Schools would respond to parental demand; new and better schools would spring up; teachers could be paid a market rate (more for subjects in short supply, less in areas with lower costs of living). If the parents demand SATs, or independent inspection, or any other services, the schools could buy them in, giving re-employment to those out-of-work civil servants.
Until that system is set up, perhaps we could ban MPs from “lying or bending the rules” by putting their children into private schools. That should raise standards in the schools other parents have to put up with.
Laurie Wedd
Tonbridge, Kent
If we lose the Royal Mail
Last Monday, I waited in all day for a parcel from a private courier firm. It was not delivered. I got on to the website of the courier, which told me that an attempted delivery was made at 1.15pm and that a card was put through the door. Eight members of my family were having lunch at this time, three yards from our front door, No card was left.
I spent 15 minutes listening to their telephoned message that my call was important, etc, then gave up. I eventually got delivery on Wednesday.
The Post Office and even Parcelforce have never treated me like this. All these people who want to privatise the Post Office will have to get used to this kind of treatment, because the Post Office as we know it is on the way out.
John Richards
St Ives, Cornwall
Under the spell of Roald Dahl
David Walliams’s article about Roald Dahl (4 November) struck a chord. Not only have I enjoyed taking my children to see his plays, but I was lucky enough to hear him speak. I was at grammar school in Amersham, just up the road from his home, and he was the guest speaker at my sixth-form prize-giving.
So how has does someone 67 years older than us keep the attention of 300 sixth-formers? Two simple stories: one about his recent visit to the Mars factory in Slough and how they put the bubbles in Maltesers; the second, the results of a survey at a girls’ boarding school about their preferences when choosing a boyfriend.
He had us all in the palm of his hand. Forgive my naivety: it took me many years to realise that he had made it all up.
Mark Lucas
High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire
Tricks to chase the Devil away
As I understand the custom, children go out “guising” (letters, 4 November), that is, they are “disguised”, so that the Devil may not recognise them while they go from door to door entertaining people, to make them laugh and thus chase the Devil away from their homes on All Hallows’ Eve.
In exchange for the performance of a song, poem, joke, dance or magic trick, the children are rewarded with sweets, nuts, fruit and some money.
I believe that the version called “trick or treat” has come from the USA. But I always make my Halloween visitors perform some sort of entertainment before I give them anything.
Heather McKay
Sheffield
Briefly…
Enemies of liberty
The most important dichotomy between political philosophies over the past two centuries (letters, 30 October, 4 November) has been not between left and right but between libertarian and authoritarian. If your attitude is that you are right and that everyone else had better do as you say then it is very easy, like Mussolini, to flip from being a socialist to a fascist.
David Burton
Wellington, telford
Rooney’s mission
Pandora has got it all wrong (3 November) when she suggests Wayne Rooney’s son Kai Wayne is named after Latin, Burmese or Maori words. As any Trekkie will have noticed, he is obviously named after Kai Winn, the evil Bajoran religious leader in Star Trek: Deep Space 9. Instead of following in his father’s footsteps as a footballer we can surely expect the young Rooney to convert the Stretford End away from spiritual devotion of the infidel Cantona to the true path of the Pah Wraiths.
Michael O’Hare
Northwood, Middlesex
The Rooneys’ baby has been given the name of a character in the medieval tale of Culhwch and Olwen, where he appears among the foremost men of Arthur’s court. He is able to grow at will as tall as the highest tree and any load he carries is rendered invisible. But perhaps Cai’s most perturbing attribute for the new parents is that he is able to go without sleep for nine days and nights. Cai (Middle Welsh, Kai) is known in English and French literature as Kay.
Dr Meic Stephens
Cardiff
Strange souvenirs
Brian Viner’s digression (5 November) about the small, sand-filled, lighthouse found in the rectum sent me to my 1967 edition of Bailey and Love’s Short Practice of Surgery, and to one of its most celebrated passages: “The variety of foreign bodies which have found their way into the rectum is hardly less remarkable than the ingenuity displayed in their removal” (the turnip, for example, removed with obstetric forceps). The article is accompanied by an X-ray of a pepper pot, found, on removal, to be inscribed “A present from Margate”.
Andrew Johnson FRCS
Haskayne, Lancashire
Watson’s role
The article on Sherlock Holmes (2 November) states that Holmes has been portrayed on film many more times than any other fictional character. There is also the implication that many more actors have played this part than any other. Dr Watson must have made a very similar number of appearances and been played by a similar number of actors.
Wolfgang Slessenger
Kenilworth, Warwickshire

Times:

Sir, The Government’s higher education framework risks creating a contradiction in policy towards universities (“Give students more money, universities told”, Nov 4). On the one hand, the Government expects universities to act as vehicles for its policy goals for social inclusion, skills and competitiveness. On the other, it is encouraging them to be more commercially enterprising and less dependent on public funding.
It is entirely appropriate that public funding for universities should be tied to policy priorities. But it does not follow that Government should define the missions and roles of our independent universities or specify how they should carry out those roles. Public funding represents a little over half of the £23 billion annual earnings of UK universities. Falling levels of government funding, and the rising costs of meeting the associated expectations, would ensure the early demise of any university that relied entirely on them.
Public grants are increasingly being substituted by revenues earned from research, teaching and other services sold in competitive international markets. Many universities are doing well in this competition — by definition, meeting discriminating business and individual needs.
It is not clear why the Government imposes requirements on universities with regard to selected groups of students and employers, while the needs of others are effectively satisfied through competition among a range of alternative suppliers. Tying government funding to declared policy outcomes, and encouraging universities (and others) to contract to deliver those outcomes would tap the enterprise and innovation that universities are showing elsewhere. This in turn would stimulate the wide-reaching reforms of tertiary education to which the framework aspires.
Paul Woodgates
Mike Boxall
PA Consulting Group
Sir, The absence of tutorials in some UK universities is a serious flaw in the system and is symptomatic of a mode of higher education that in general is not delivering what it is expected to and that is poor value for its tuition fees. A number of students at UK universities have no tutorials at all. They are merely expected to attend, say, eight 40-minute lectures a week, the occasional seminar and to pass the course they must submit perhaps five satisfactory essays a year and pass two examinations. This is the university system at its most “hands off”. It is certainly not worth the circa £3,225 a year the student has to pay in tuition fees.
John Idris Jones
(Retired lecturer in English)
Ruthin, Denbighshire
Sir, The Government has had responsibility for providing compulsory secondary education for all in Britain since at least the 1944 Education Act. Every year there are thousands of parents who resort to desperate measures to get their children into good schools (report, Nov 3). Does the Government have any ideas about how long it will be before there is a sufficient variety of good schools to meet the requirements of parents for their children’s education?
Nicholas Beyts
London SW7

Sir, MPs must now take their medicine, accept Sir Christopher Kelly’s recommendations in full and pay up as Sir Thomas Legg demands (“Kelly consigns angry MPs to lonely lives in one-bed flats”, report, Nov 5). None of this retribution is pretty, but it is justified by MPs’ manifold past misdemeanours in exploiting a lax system of controls over their expenses claims.
MPs may weep and wail at the draconian rules they now face. But they are where they are as a result of years of political cowardice and hypocrisy by successive prime ministers and party politicians in denying MPs and ministers properly justified pay increases recommended by the independent Senior Salaries Review Body. It always looked good to turn the increases down but then turn a blind eye to the continuing exploitation of the expenses system and ignore proposals for tightening it up, no doubt in the belief that no one would notice.
We did notice. The outcome has been wholly predictable, and predicted, for years.
However, now is the time to move on. Once the new expenses regime is in place and the last repayment made (ie, in the first year of the next Parliament) there should be a substantial increase in MPs’ pay no matter what the “court of public opinion” or tabloid headlines may say. MPs and ministers have fallen way behind their job-weight peers in both the public and private sectors. An MP is paid today only half the top of a headteacher’s pay scale in London or two-thirds the pay of a GP. We want the best professional headteachers to ensure that our children get a good education and we want the best doctors who will look after our ills: that is what it takes to recruit and keep them.
We need the best MPs, although ideally a lot fewer of them — 450 should do it — but we need good- quality people, capable of meeting the policy challenges of our complex society, of producing legislation that is coherent, thought-out and considered with care, and of holding the Executive better to account. That, too, is going to require the right rate for the job, and today that will not be far short of £100,000. So the policy objective should be fewer but better: that means paying the right price, not settling for shoddy goods in the bargain-basement.
Sir John Baker
Former chairman, Senior Salaries Review Body
Sir, MEPs are paid far more than their UK equivalents and have an extremely lax expenses regime that will probably never be reformed because these politicians do not face day-to-day media barrages.
Europe now becomes an increasingly attractive option for the politically ambitious.
Professor J. R. Shackleton
Dean, Royal Docks Business School, University of East London
Sir, MPs living in and around London who are “lucky” enough to fall just outside the 60-minute commuting zone should choose their words carefully over the coming weeks. The many thousands of their electorate, who have to travel in and out of London at their own expense without a taxpayer to feed them and pay for their hotel, may start to look for candidates living in the real world at the next general election.
Steve Higgins
Ramsgate, Kent

Sir, In the UK much public anxiety about the European Union mistakenly revolves around its supposed intrusive and unbridled strength. On the contrary, the fundamental cause for concern is that the EU is in practice far too weak to protect the interests of its member states (leading article, Nov 4).
Indeed, the EU bureaucracy, for all its bluster, cannot effectively exercise even a small part of the power currently sought by the executive. The contrast with the United States is sharp and instructive, but this weakness cannot be remedied through any Lisbon or other treaty fiat. Power of a federal kind can only be built incrementally, and with the consent and approval of the member states, who will cede actual authority when it is justified by an increase of security and wellbeing, and not otherwise.
Until the EU deserves respect and has earned the right to rule, we will need national governments to order and defend our societies.
In practice this is precisely what is occurring: witness the gulf between the increasingly pragmatic national approaches to energy and climate change, and the unfeasible and counterproductive mess that passes for EU policy on these matters.
Dr John Constable
Director of Policy and Research, The Renewable Energy Foundation
Sir, Time will show the Lisbon treaty to have been one more step in the inexorable progress towards a United States of Europe; each step makes the next easier and more tempting to the federalists. The sceptics must now believe that withdrawal from the EU, whatever the costs, is the only option. A referendum or, better still, an election dominated by this single issue would give a new slant to Dr Johnson’s adage that when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight it concentrates his mind wonderfully.
Ray Long
London SW16
Sir, The Czech constitutional court has ruled that the Lisbon treaty does not conflict with the Czech constitution. One wonders what view our Supreme Court would take if asked to consider the point regarding our constitution.
Richard Hill
Chichester, W Sussex
Sir, With the ratification of the Lisbon treaty, and the establishment of a president for the EU, it is important that, if the office holder is to have real executive power as well as a status comparable to a head of state, he or she should be elected by the whole electorate of the EU and not just by a political elite.
Miland Joshi
Birmingham
Sir, What better endorsement could there be for David Cameron’s pragmatic and sensible approach to Europe? The French are upset. He must be doing something right.
Justin Whiteley
Hampton Hill, Middx

Sir, My great-grandfather was Field Marshal Sir Neville Bowles Chamberlain (1820-1902), who served in the Indian Army with distinction. He was a subaltern in the First Afghan War (1839 to 1842), saw action in many campaigns and was wounded on various occasions. He evidently knew India and Afghanistan well. In about 1878, he wrote the following in a letter home:
“Anyone who knows the native mind, whether Hindoo or Mahomedan, must be alive to the fact that, with all our desire to do justly and to love mercy, the great majority of the people would be glad to see us depart, and would rejoice to return to the state of things we pride ourselves in having delivered them from. We are aliens. We are wanting in every bond which unites people together. Further, we are conquerors, and we are of a stamp who say and act as if whatever we think or do is best.”
It seems to me that these views may well be those of some of our senior officers now in Afghanistan.
Christopher Daniel
Faversham, Kent
Sir, Hamid Karzai must be wondering why he was rebuked by the Europeans for failing to ensure that the Afghan people should be granted a fair vote on their choice of president (report, Nov 3). I’m sure he must have seen the TV pictures of the celebrations at the EU after its success in ratifying the Lisbon treaty without allowing all the European electorate a democratic vote.
Denis Downes
Leicester

Sir, It is erroneous to argue (letter, Nov 4) that high-speed railways benefit only “a select portion of the community” as if motorways do not. Pendolino trains, which run on conventional multi-purpose railways, can bring high speeds to much of the network, if only we can think outside the self-imposed box of train-operating franchises. Railways, whether high speed or not, have far greater development potential than roads, both in speed and capacity. They are far more efficient, greener and safer and take far less land per unit of capacity. The modal shift from road to railway, stated by your correspondent to be limited, could be increased if planners insisted upon a rail connection for all road distribution centres, if road users were compelled to pay the full cost of investment, management and maintenance of the roads, and if the Health & Safety Executive paid more attention to their unsafe nature.
Andrew Dow
Newton-on-Ouse, N Yorks

Telegraph:

SIR – In 1966 seven soldiers of my Corps were killed when they were ambushed by members of the Aden police force. The lesson was that we cannot trust locally raised forces during an insurgency, especially when the government being supported is corrupt.
The Prime Minister’s continued pretence that we are safeguarding our own streets by our presence in Afghanistan is shameful, particularly while we permit, unchecked, hundreds of young men from that benighted country into Britain as asylum seekers.
 
Malcolm Allen
Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire
SIR – The death of five British soldiers must indicate that the Afghan Forces, bluntly, cannot be trusted. To commit to working further with the discredited Afghan government must be a recipe for death and disaster.
Philip Congdon
La Bastide d’Engras, Gard, France.
SIR – When will someone organise a “Bring the Troops Home” march along the lines of the anti-Iraq war protest.
John Tilsiter
Harrow, Middlesex
SIR – There is much talk about pulling out because of the poor quality of Afghan National Police recruits. This is foolish. As a filmmaker, I have spent a great deal of time with mentors in Afghanistan. It is precisely our ability to help train the ANP which will allow us to pull out.
Besides, it is what we promised when still drunk on the defeat of the Taliban.
Peter Bach
London SE3
SIR – When joining the British Armed Forces or the police, new recruits receive basic training for several months to prepare them for deployment. This training instils discipline, promotes camaraderie, teaches values and ensures fitness. In the process, those who are found to be unsuitable are weeded out.
Why are we not training the Afghan police and military in this way – away from Afghanistan, where our forces training them would be safer? During such basic training, there is no need to issue live ammunition, except in supervised situations on the firing range. Anyone who has joined the military knows how carefully weaponry is controlled during their formative training.
Once these Afghans achieve the required standard, they can be deployed much more effectively alongside our forces, back in their own country.
Michael Coombs
Beckenham, Kent
SIR – Why defuse roadside bombs in Afghanistan? Why not just blow them up? My father did exactly that with bombs and mines in the Western Desert in north Africa in 1942.
Michael Brett
London N13
Practicalities of Lisbon
SIR – I was disappointed to read the reaction (Letters, November 5) to David Cameron’s policy on a future Europe referendum. All those Conservative supporters holding Eurosceptic views, as I do, must be dismayed by the denial of democracy by our discredited Government, but what, in practical terms, did we expect David Cameron to do?
A referendum next year on the Lisbon Treaty would be a costly waste of time. Those in favour of the Treaty would not bother to vote, because it is a done deal, and no matter how large the vote against, the pro-Europeans would ignore it.
Mr Cameron’s first duty is to put the economy right. When the dust has settled, he can set out his long-term European policy, and put that to the British people in a referendum – provided he can find a consensus on the question to ask.
Chris Middleton
Rotherham, South Yorkshire
SIR – There is no need to get all hot and bothered about the Lisbon Treaty. We should simply copy the French: ignore the rules we do not like.
Sandy Pratt
Lingfield, Surrey
SIR – Could there be a greater vindication of the Conservative Party’s policy on Europe than the attack by Pierre Lellouche (report, November 5)?
Richard Couson
Maidstone, Kent
SIR – Now that our unelected Prime Minister has finally sold us out to Europe, surely we no longer need 646 MPs. Perhaps Sir Christopher Kelly should be invited to hold another investigation.
Colin N. Tait
Paignton, Devon
Lest we forget
SIR – In Baker Street underground station, a fine marble war memorial is passed by thousands every day. It is now dirty and decrepit (Letters, November 4).
A friendly Transport for London official told me that the cost of repair was unaffordable at £10,000. I told him I would polish the big brass shield, whose engraving is scarcely legible for filth. He said he would do it himself, in a week or so. Lest he forget, before Remembrance Sunday, I shall be there with my Brasso.
Penrose Halson
London NW1
The origins of Sunday
SIR – David Stevens (Letters, November 4) is mistaken over the Christian Sunday. The Old Testament has it that God created the world in six days and rested on the seventh. That day of rest, or Sabbath, is observed to this day by Jews on Saturdays.
In the wake of the Resurrection, which took place on a Sunday, and in honour of it, Christians started referring to Sunday as “the Lord’s Day” and used it as their main day of worship. When the Emperor Constantine declared that “the most glorious day of the Sun” should be a day of rest, it was easy for Christians to borrow the ideas around the Sabbath rest and transfer them to Sunday. So Sunday is not the Sabbath, but many Christians are privileged to use it as if it were.
Rev Cliff Taylor
Letchworth Garden City, Hertfordshire
The Noughties’ prayer
SIR – Will the Noughties be the first decade since the 1950s not to see a Cliff Richard record reach Number One?
Tim Holman
St Albans, Hertfordshire
The taxpayers’ bank
SIR – I live and work in Jakarta. Prior to the first tranche of British taxpayers’ money being funnelled to the Royal Bank of Scotland, nobody here had heard of RBS. Since then, the city has been subjected to saturation advertising in newspapers, magazines and billboards, offering credit cards and unsecured loans with the promise of an exciting, carefree lifestyle. The same is true in Singapore.
Hardly a week passes without an unsolicited call from RBS trying to sell its banking services and easy loans. It is clear that not only has RBS failed to learn from its past reckless lending policies, but also that British taxpayers’ money is now being used to fund a massive expansion of RBS lending business, out of sight of the British taxpayer (Letters, November 4).
David J. C. Cook
Jakarta, Indonesia
Stamp of approval
SIR – I was delighted to read that this year’s Christmas stamps feature details of stained-glass windows (report, November 3). Last year’s pantomime character stamps were colourful and fun, but it will be good to have the true meaning of Christmas on our envelopes again.
I will be purchasing a double quantity as I note we return to a secular selection next year.
Geraldine Guthrie
East Horsley, Surrey
Ties that blind
SIR – Better a bad tie (Letters, November 5) than the scruffy open-necked shirts worn by many television presenters.
Stan Procter
Tadworth, Surrey
SIR – It is not the ties that I most object to; it is the newsreaders’ wretched hands. I wish they would learn the art of stillness. They are not conducting an orchestra.
Sheila Fleming
Edenbridge, Kent
Annoying trains
SIR – Never mind missing the bus by a second being the most annoying thing in the world (Leading article, November 5), can anyone tell me why, whenever I just miss a train and see it pulling out on time without me, the next one is always a minute late?
John Brandon
Tonbridge, Kent
The extraordinary five-year plan for MPs’ expenses
SIR – You describe Sir Christopher Kelly’s committee’s report as “A rigorous first step to a cleaner Parliament” (Leading article, November 5). However, it is less than rigorous in suggesting that reforms be introduced over five years.
It is extraordinary that current MPs who have planned on the expectation of future expenses will continue to be supported.
The electorate should never have been taken for granted in this arrogant way.
Robert Smart
Bexhill, East Sussex
SIR – Why is it necessary to allow a five-year phasing-in period for MPs to make family members redundant? Is that what happens in industry?
Tim Rann
Mirfield, West Yorkshire
SIR – Angry as we all are about MPs’ expenses, it is a step too far to prevent MPs from employing their spouses in secretarial roles. MPs’ spouses may be perfectly well qualified, as well as the best-situated person for the role.
Are we saying that MPs should have no secretarial support outside office hours, or that any that is provided by a spouse must be unpaid?
Such restrictions do not apply in any other walk of life, and would probably fall foul of equality and employment laws.
Gareth Williams
Ross-on-Wye, Herefordshire
SIR – The Number 10 website has a “Sarah Brown section”. Given that Mrs Brown is neither an elected member of the Government nor a civil servant, I am surprised that she has space on a site funded by the taxpayer.
The Government still seems unwilling to take steps to avoid blatant misuse of public funds.
Steve Proud
Swansea
SIR – The Latin word ipsa means “self”. Does this tell us something about Ipsa, the new body to regulate MPs’ expenses?
Bryan Enfield
Chesterfield, Derbyshire

Irish Times:

Men-only ruling for golf club
Madam, – So, congratulations are due to the male members of Portmarnock Golf Club, who can continue to limit its facilities from the onslaught of the lady players of Ireland.
And, can we assume that their victory in this may cost tens of thousands or maybe more in legal costs? In the normal run of things, are we to understand that the State or State agency in the form of the Equality Authority will now pay the costs of each part of the action? Let us hope we have full disclosure of the legal and other expenses of all of this through the courts. Then the good members of Portmarnock might come to realise they too have joined the members of Government, Fás and other semi-states that have contributed to the loss of the wealth of this nation – where it was scarcely a priority.
To show their goodwill towards the underprivileged in recessionary times and with Christmas on the horizon, the members of Portmarnock might consider a fund-raiser or two (in the form perhaps of an open competition) towards the costs throughout, so that such a trivial matter cannot affect, even in a small way, those who are genuinely in need. Of course, a mixed open might raise more, but that might be a bridge too far for our male golfing friends.
Finally, some of us play in fully equal opportunity golf clubs and, really, the ladies are, like, normal. So, to the members of Portmarnock the message is: do not be afraid. – Yours, etc,
DERMOT HERBERT,
Churchview Drive,
Killiney,
Co Dublin.

Madam, – Judging from the objections of some people following the recent Supreme Court’s rejection of the appeal against Portmarnock Golf Club, it would seem that women should be accorded different rights to men. Everybody knows there are very many associations, organisations and clubs in this country whose memberships are restricted to women only. Therefore, I do not see why men should not be accorded the exact same right as women? To seek to apply double standards in this regard would be selectively discriminatory and sexist. I thought this was the original point of the appeal, namely, equality of rights for all. – Yours, etc,
IVOR SHORTS,
Rathfarnham, Dublin 16.

Madam, – If the Equality Authority were going to spend money on a Supreme Court case, could they not have been more equitable? When the Equality Authority brings some equality of gender to Irish family law, I will picket any golf club they wish. Until then, priorities please. – Yours, etc,
DANIEL BENNETT,
Lad Lane,
Dublin 2.

Madam, – It has become increasingly frustrating to see members of the public on both sides of the argument concerning Portmarnock Golf Club fail to understand the fundamental issues at stake. Yes, male golfers are free to associate as they please but the State should not be supporting them, in this case with a drinks license, if they do so in a discriminatory manner. Just because you have the right to do something doesn’t mean how you exercise that right can’t be branded as detestable (see freedom of speech and Nick Griffin).
It’s a simple case, the Supreme Court got it wrong. – Yours, etc,
LIAM REIDY,
Carlisle Street, Dublin 8.
Keeping within the speed limit
Madam, – Sarah Carey’s piece on the joys of driving in Ireland was amusing insofar as it cast her in a worse light than those nostril-flared tailgaiters she railed against (Opinion, November 4th). Her somewhat self-righteous adherence to the speed limit is at least as dangerous as the behaviour of the terminally frustrated drivers in her rear view mirror.
May I suggest, to avoid further carnage on the road when she is presented with a rabid tailgaiter stuck to her bumper on a single carriageway, that she do the pragmatic thing and pull further into the left if safe to do so?
There is usually enough room to allow faster motorists go by and they will appreciate her doing so. This will help reduce the danger on the roads by keeping all the participants’ blood pressure within the normal range.
When she is on a dual carriageway or a motorway I would suggest that she (the rest of the country please copy) drive in the inside lane and use the outside lane for its only purpose, namely overtaking.
In my view, it is safer to leave the enforcement of national speed limits to the Garda Síochána. – Yours, etc,
JOHN MULLEN,
Glebemount,
Wicklow.

Madam, – As a frequent visitor to Ireland, I read Sarah Carey’s article about drivers’ behaviour with interest. I have been driving for more than 50 years and I find the driving standards in Ireland are quite scary, especially at night.
There is an unpredictability about drivers’ actions which is unnerving and there is a lack of appreciation of how dangerous a motor vehicle can be unless you are concentrating 100 per cent. Other road users are not immune from this malaise. Most of us have been scared witless by cyclists without lights and pedestrians wearing dark clothing walking on the wrong side of the road.
I see so many people driving without seat-belts that I wonder if there are any prosecutions for such foolish and criminal acts. I noticed in your Weekend Review (October 31st) a picture of Jackie Healy Rae at the driving wheel without a seat belt. Not a good example, but maybe I do him an injustice, perhaps he was just posing while his picture was being taken? It would have been a better picture had he been wearing his belt. – Yours, etc,
TOM MAHON,
Stratford upon Avon,
Warwickshire, England.
From the top
Madam, – With redundancies in the air at Anglo Irish Bank, is it too much to hope that the well-established practice of “last in first out” be jettisoned in favour of the much more appropriate format of selecting individuals for redundancy from the top down? – Yours, etc,
ALAN KENNEDY,
Mount Auburn,
Killiney, Co Dublin.
Sharing the pain of economic crisis
Madam, – It was uplifting to hear President Mary McAleese, speak on Morning Ireland so positively about the cut-backs we should all be making, whether in the public or private sector.
To hear our President, who is above politics, inform us that she has taken a salary cut of 10 per cent and cut the running expenses of her household by 12.5 per cent is setting a tremendous example to the people of Ireland, whatever their political beliefs.
As a self-employed business man with a staff of 15 people in the private sector where hundreds are losing their jobs daily, I hope the trade union leaders will take note of the example taken by our President and not influence their members to take to the streets – which can only do damage to those fortunate enough to still have jobs in the private sector.
It does not take much common sense to work out that if our economy has been reduced in size to 2003 levels then the public service has also to reduce in size, either by reducing the numbers employed or, preferably, a reduction in salaries and pensions.
The example set by our President is a gleam of hope for us all. – Yours, etc,
RAY TILSON,
Kilternan, Co Dublin.
A parrot in the garden
Madam, – A parrot has taken up residence in a tree at the bottom of my garden. Is this to do with global warming? – Yours, etc,
VINCENT KEAVENY,
Nutley Avenue,
Donnybrook, Dublin 4.
Whether or not to wear the poppy
Madam, – It appears that some of your recent letter writers fail to grasp the salient points of the annual remembrance ceremonies and indeed role of the Royal British Legion here in Ireland.
Tom Cooper (November 5th) claims that those of us who wear a poppy do so to annoy those of a nationalist bent. This is incorrect. Funds raised by the annual poppy collection go to help ex-servicemen and their dependants of different generations including those injured and affected during recent tours in Afghanistan and Iraq.
The Legion is a non-political organisation and it is wrong for Mr Cooper to think differently. Sunday’s ceremony in St Patrick’s is an ecumenical service and the attendance of Mrs McAleese is a clear sign that the sacrifice of earlier generations and of the present members of the Irish Guards, Royal Irish Regiment and Irish members of the Royal Marines is not forgotten by this State.
In a week that has seen five servicemen die in one incident in Afghanistan, it is important, now more than ever, that the Legion continues its work after the soldiers return. – Yours, etc,
DEREK REID,
Macroom Road,
Coolock,
Dublin 17.

Madam, – Tom Cooper‘s assertion (November 5th) that the symbolism of the poppy is “a veiled propagandist attack on separatist Irish nationhood” is truly extraordinary.
Have the efforts of former president Mary Robinson and President Mary McAleese to recognise the contribution which many Irish men and women made to freeing Europe from Nazi tyranny been futile? In recessionary Ireland are we moving backwards into the old nationalist versus Brits camps?
People should be able to wear an Easter lily with pride; equally they should be able to wear a poppy with pride too. – Yours, etc,
BERNARD O’GRADY,
Queens Avenue,
Muswell Hill,
London,
England.

Madam, – As a young boy, growing up in the late 1940s and early 1950s in Nenagh, I recall that Poppy Sunday was commemorated each year. The ex-service men who had served in the first World War paraded wearing their medals and a wreath was laid at the memorial to the dead, which still stands in the town.
The poppy was sold and worn by many people. – Yours, etc,
MICHAEL O’CONNOR,
Barn, Galway.

Madam, – In 1933 the Co-operative Women’s Guild, in the UK, introduced the white poppy.
It symbolises the belief that there are better ways to resolve conflicts than killing strangers. Wearing it is a statement that war cannot create peace.
Perhaps someone who feels the need to wear a poppy, but does not want to cause offence, might find the white poppy an acceptable compromise. – Yours, etc,
JJ POWER,
Caragh,
Naas,
Co Kildare.
Time to withdraw from the euro
Madam, – The governor of the Bank of England must thank St George that his government didn’t surrender control of the pound sterling to the gentlemen of the European Central Bank. Watching the bumper-to-bumper convoy of cars streaming across the Border for shopping must fill him with a justifiable smug satisfaction.
We should at once invoke the guarantee of subsidiarity and withdraw from the euro. After which we should devalue the restored punt.
At which point we might also restore to the “poorest in our society” the “legitimate expectation” of the Christmas bonus. – Yours, etc,
PEADAR KELLY,
Sillogue Gardens,
Ballymun, Dublin 11.
Glass half-full?
Madam, – According to the Drinks Industry Group of Ireland (Home News, November 3rd), 2,000 pubs are predicted to close in the next 10 years. A chance exists, therefore, that we Irish may begin to wean ourselves off alcohol. Can I dream that hospitals may start treating people who suffer from non-drinks related ailments between Thursday and Sunday? Is it possible that alcohol-related road deaths may decline to less horrifying levels? Could it be that the endless talent wasted on alcohol in Ireland might one day fulfil its potential? My compliments to the Drinks Industry Group of Ireland and its report for offering the country hope in these dark, troubled times! – Yours, etc,
MATTHEW CRONIN,
St Mary’s Road,
East Wall, Dublin 3.
Missing a shot of ‘Scrap Saturday’
Madam, – I lived through the recession of the 1980s and am living through our present difficult times. Is it possible that the pain feels far worse this time because I have no anaesthetic? A good shot of Scrap Saturday administered to me coursed through my veins and left me fit to fight. Why is there no anti-Nama inoculation coming across the airwaves? – Yours, etc,
HENRY T COUNIHAN,
Castle Court,
Booterstown, Co Dublin.
For whom the roads toll?
Madam, – Considering the country is experiencing a period of sustained deflation, can we hard-pressed drivers now expect a reduction in toll road fees? For years the toll road companies and the NRA justified annual increases because of inflation, so surely the reverse should happen now? – Yours, etc,
RICHARD McCORMACK,
Woodstown Way,
Knocklyon, Dublin 16.
‘Brown Sugar on Jimi Hendrix’
Madam, – Your reviewer of Brown Sugar on Jimi Hendrix, said, “If I follow Marsha Hunt correctly (and I’m not at all sure that I do) then her ramshackle show about Jimi Hendrix and 1960s America portrays the singer and guitarist as a marvel of easy racial integration, who nevertheless struggled within a bitter culture of racism, which the iconic Hunt (aka Brown Sugar) contends is ultimately all about sexual anxiety, in which fear of miscegenation renders all black men violent threats, which Jimi certainly was, apart from his gentleness, and this may somehow explain that his fatal drug overdose was in fact a conspiracy of either the Black Panthers, the record industry or both.”
This long-winded, poorly-constructed sentence could lead your readers to believe that the event I’m staging is about America in the 1960s. How could he fail to note that not only do I insist on the importance of the UK during that decade, but that without the UK, Jimi Hendrix could have never emerged?
That the reviewer claims I said that the Black Panther Party for Self Defense had anything to do with the death of Jimi Hendrix is wrong. It’s also ridiculous. Nor would I have said that Jimi’s death was a record business conspiracy. Perhaps your reviewer was so preoccupied with the nudes on stage who seemed to offend him that he failed to hear what I did and did not say?
The link between sex and racism in the US is not, as the reviewer suggests, a notion that I dreamed up. It’s an established fact that I reiterate in my talk about Jimi Hendrix, an artist who dared to flaunt his sexuality and was a major sex symbol of the 1960s. – Yours, etc,
MARSHA HUNT,
Dargle Road
Bray, Co Wicklow.
Pay for provost and US president
Madam, – It has come to my attention that the Provost of Trinity College, Dr John Hegarty, is due to receive a pay rise of 19 per cent. His salary would then be €270,000. This rise will apparently put him on the same pay as that of President Barack Obama, leader of the free world.
Staffing levels in Trinity have been slashed, with people on a pittance being shown the door and those that are left taking on all the extra work for less money. How can this state of affairs be justified? – Yours, etc,
DERMOT SWEENEY,
Ushers Island,
Dublin 8.
SPV or SVP?
Madam, – Perhaps we could sneak a small typo into the Nama legislation and have our €54 billion sent to the SVP? – Yours, etc,
MARK PERRY,
Seafield Road,
Clontarf,
Dublin 3.

Well I must be off

best wishes John

Hair today

November 5, 2009 by johnblakey

Hair today 5 November 2009

Off out into the autumn day to have my hair cut, with Ann Marie, its a pale sun which accompanies me, along the road, the leaves heaped in great copper piles. I am a minute late. She appears and looks sternly at me, I am always late in having my hair cut. “Not as bad as last time” she decides and she set to work with a snip snip here and a snip snip there. She has done the 3 peaks walk for charity, “Twenty seven miles” she say dreamily. “The first two peaks were all right, the weather was overcast but not raining, perfect walking weather, but the third! It started raining and the rain got harder and harder. But we made it”. “Any plans for next year?” I inquire. “I am getting married she says, Honeymoon in Thailand. She is looking forward to elephant riding in the elephant training farm.
She goes and fetches a stool and wobbles on it uncertainly. “Don’t fall off” I advise. She leans forward and in a confidential whisper says “One of the castor wheels has gone missing! I am liable to fall on top of you”. While the prospect of Ann Marie falling on top of me is not entirely unpleasant, she is equipped with lethal looking scissors edged steel looking very sharp. I try and think of something else as she wobbles on the stool gamely managing to cut the hair on the back of my neck. I think about the stool. One of the castors is missing? How on earth could that happen in a well run hairdressers? If it fell off there is no where for it to go. Perhaps there is a secret castor thief who sneaks in while all their backs are turned and they are snip snip snipping away, and steals the castors? Unlikely you would think they’d notice.
All done she gets off her wobbly seat and I am unbloodied, and all neat and trimmed and tidy for the next couple of months.

Postcards

Lions head towering above camps bay Clifton, South Africa
http://www.flickr.com/photos/emperordalek/4073941663/

Le Crotoy, Fishing port and marina, France
http://www.flickr.com/photos/emperordalek/4073942413/

Pooh bear, Disney, USA
http://www.flickr.com/photos/emperordalek/4073943447/

Hi from Maplethorpe, England
http://www.flickr.com/photos/emperordalek/4073944151/

Maplethorpe, England
http://www.flickr.com/photos/emperordalek/4074702632/

Postcrossing card from Taiwan interesting building
http://www.flickr.com/photos/emperordalek/4074469419/

Lovely postcrossing cat card from Finland
http://www.flickr.com/photos/emperordalek/4074470313/

Postcrossing card from the USA Ithaca Commons, USA
http://www.flickr.com/photos/emperordalek/4074471769/

Postcrossing card from Germany, Serie Bilderleben, Germany
http://www.flickr.com/photos/emperordalek/4074472845/

Obituary: Barry Brown: actors’ agent

Barry Brown was a persuasive actors’ agent who used his expressive personality and sense of humour to further the interests of such clients as Sue Nicholls — better known as Audrey Roberts in Coronation Street — and Stephen Tompkinson, who played the bashful priest in Ballykissangel.
Barry Everard Brown was born in Manchester in 1934 to an impoverished background. Thanks to the wide variety of books which his father introduced him to via the local library, and the enlightened teaching at the local state schools, he gained scholarships which led him to the University of Nottingham, in 1952 to study English. He became a leading light in the university’s drama group and graduated in 1955. Unsure of what he wanted to do, he stayed on to train as a teacher.
He came to London in 1957 and started his career at a school in Harrow where he met Merlyn Rees, then a colleague, and supported his friend in his campaign to become an MP. He did not not fancy politics for himself, and his teaching career ended after three years but not before he had taught Michael Rosen, the children’s author and former Children’s Laureate. Despite winning popularity and some success in the profession, he realised it was not his metier, and he found a position in the American Embassy’s information department. This led to a four-month tour of the US during which he developed a lifelong love for America.
Work at the information department led him into advertising; he became a copywriter and worked on several prominent campaigns. In the early 1960s he coined the now much used phrase “Late to Eight” for a small shopping centre in Tunbridge Wells. He also developed the other, now somewhat clichéd, “Hot and Cool” catchline for the 18-30s Club.
Through all these career experiments he maintained his interest in the theatre. He performed with amateur groups, one of which staged old-time music-hall shows around North London. Through this he met Elizabeth Morgan, a radio actress, who asked him to help her in staging events for Amnesty International. This led to his taking over a cast which performed in Hampstead.
He also helped to raise money for the building of the Greenwich Theatre by taking a company to the Green Man in Blackheath and then to the restaurant at the theatre itself. He became chairman at the Players’ Theatre, known for its Victorian music hall traditions, in the West End. Watneys, the brewer, then offered Brown the opportunity to stage his own music hall show as a dinner/theatre club at a pub in Victoria. The project suffered from a lack of publicity and lasted only a few months, but during that time Brown became friendly with many actors, some of whom would complain about their representation, and his freelance status gave him time to try his hand as an actors’ agent. Over the following 30 years he represented many of the cast members of the popular soaps and at one time five of his clients appeared in Coronation Street together.
Sue Nicholls, still playing Audrey Roberts, was one of the first actresses to join him and remained with him until his retirement in 2004. He represented Sylvia Sims and Rory Bremner in the comic’s brief early career as a conventional actor.
He took on Stephen Tompkinson, who acted in the Drop the Dead Donkey TV-newsroom farce as well as Ballykissangel, straight from drama school. During their first meeting Brown made a remark which he adopted as something of a motto: “I will make you famous and you will make me rich.” Along with many other agents, Brown attended drama school performances and scoured productions on the fringe looking for talent.
From these beginnings many of Brown’s clients went on to play important roles at the National Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Company. He focused especially on television and on theatre and though he was less interested in film he would always strike hard bargains with companies that wanted to engage his clients. He took risks but knew the value of his actors and stuck out for the fee he thought they were worth. He usually won.
In his later years he became a respected figure at drama schools, talking to the students about how to present themselves to agents and what their audition pieces should be. He also enrolled at King’s College London, to study classics. Brown is survived by his wife, Ros, to whom he was married in 1970.
Barry Brown, actors’ agent, was born on November 14, 1934. He died of cancer on October 31, 2009, aged 74

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article6901431.ece

Letters:

Guardian:

If you had £54bn, what would you do with it (British banking sell-off begins, 4 November)? How about lending some to a hard-up extractive company scrambling for oil in the civil-war ravaged Congo? Or maybe backing a few climate-wrecking coal power plants? Or, if that gets boring, how about supporting a mining company with plans to blast a sacred mountain that is the ancestral domain of an endangered Indian tribe?
Doesn’t sound appealing? Well sadly that’s what our money is going towards right now, whether we like it or not. The latest staggering hand-out to RBS has once again been proffered by the Treasury free of any social or environmental strings. Since last October’s bail-out, RBS has already invested well over £10bn in projects and companies linked to climate change and human rights abuses. Taken together, the annual carbon emissions embedded in RBS’s loans are equivalent to the whole of Bangladesh’s.
When challenged on this recently in court, the government admitted that it does not consider these issues relevant to the taxpayer – despite the government having set itself a legal obligation to drastically slash carbon emissions. As a taxpayer, I disagree. It’s bad enough that our money is propping up a bank which is the poster-child of corporate greed and financial mismanagement. But for that money to simultaneously undermine Britain’s climate and human rights obligations is downright scandalous.
Julian Oram

Justice Burton’s ruling in favour of a green activist whose beliefs interfered with his job (‘I’m a green martyr’, 4 November) has the potential to become an epistemological nightmare. By raising what were previously treated as political and lifestyle choices to the status of “genuinely held beliefs”, the ruling effectively creates an incentive to be dogmatic in one’s opinions, simply in order to avoid forms of social intercourse that one finds disagreeable. After all, evidence of a changed mind is all that would be needed to lose one the protection afforded by the ruling.
Steve Fuller
Professor of sociology, University of Warwick
• The ruling that a belief is protected by religious discrimination regulations if it is “not an opinion or view based on the present state of information available”, is the legalisation of irrationality.
Sam Shuster
Framlingham, Suffolk
• Looking at the picture of David Cameron on the London underground (Cameron promises bruising battle with EU … , 4 November), he must be a superman. As I rattle along on the Northern line I can just about read the paper, but there he is, standing with no visible means of support and writing on a pad at the same time. Things must be much smoother on the Jubilee line, or does Cameron have this effect on every train on which he travels?
Charlie Burgess
London
• Perhaps we need more “knights on shining bicycles” (Johnson rides to the rescue, 4 November) patrolling our streets to protect us from gangs of “feral kids”. We could call them “policemen”. Tony Cheney
Ipswich, Suffolk
• I line the perimeter of my garden with fox droppings (Letters, 4 November), which seems to keep elephants away from my sweet peas.
Alastair Gilmour
Newcastle upon Tyne
• I remember “Well-meaning Gruniad readers against the bobm” (Letters, passim). But my favourite was “Gardeners for a nuclear-free fuchsia”.
Jane Shutt
Scarborough

So Peter Mandelson believes a more “consumer-led”, business driven, higher education system will provide the solution to declining social mobility (Entry into elite universities should not depend on grades alone, says Mandelson, 4 November). Ironically, it was being offered the chance to study subjects such as philosophy, English and history of art that enabled me, and a whole generation of post-war, working-class children to see our possibilities differently.
In arguing that higher education for the many should be directly linked to jobs in industries which may not even exist by the time students have finished their degrees, Mandelson is suggesting nothing more than a return to a reductive pre-1945 model. Education for the love of learning and growth as a person will once more be the prerogative of the rich and privileged. No doubt wealthy “customers” for an Oxford BA in philosophy, politics and economics will be encouraged to note a minister of innovation in a past its sell-by-date government as one of its possible “outcomes”.
Chrissie Tiller
Director, MA artists in society, Goldsmiths College, London University
• Yesterday’s report, Higher Ambitions, sets the seal on a process that began with the introduction of tuition fees. Universities are to view students as paying customers. As consumers, students want to know that the product lives up to expectations. Whether one agrees with the commodification of higher education or not, it is a fact of life in seminar rooms and lecture halls. The problem for lecturers is that this encourages students to view their degrees as a product which they consume passively. Put your money down, turn up to class and in three years’ time receive a 2.1. But you don’t expect to lose weight simply by joining a gym, nor should students expect a good degree simply because they’ve paid tuition fees.
By pandering to the clamour for more contact hours, the report further erodes the idea that students “read” for a degree. If universities can’t or won’t manage applicants’ expectations, future students can look forward to fewer seminars and tutorials, more lectures, more office hours, and perhaps supervised library sessions – confirming the misconceived view of knowledge as transmission.
Dr Mark Roodhouse
University of York
• It would be disastrous for any government to follow a policy of restricting research funding to those universities which have enjoyed preferentially high funding in the past. This would simply damage world-leading research undertaken across a broad range of disciplines in universities throughout the sector.
This research benefits international companies, UK SMEs, the government and the public sector and, of course, students. A policy of restricting research funding would also undermine the international partnerships in teaching, research and knowledge transfer in which modern universities have led the field and which the government’s HE framework rightly concludes should be better promoted. Whatever its merits, the framework will cut little ice unless the chancellor’s pre-budget report confirms that the government is prepared to adopt a bolder strategy and give an Obama-style investment boost to higher education.
Professor Les Ebdon
Chair, million+: vice-chancellor, University of Bedfordshire
• In my experience, the two main obstacles to good teaching are bureaucracy and research. Maybe the government should require universities to release figures of how much time their staff spend filling forms, attending meetings, compiling reports and responding to initiatives. As for research, the situation is quite simple. Since the inception of the research assessment exercise, the majority of academics in the UK are obsessed with publications on which academic careers are built at the expense of teaching. There has been a proliferation of academic journals making profits for publishers on the back of “free” academic time. A large part of this published work goes entirely unread and unnoticed. If the government wants to enhance the quality of teaching in universities, there is a simple way: scrap the research assessment exercise.
Professor Yiannis Gabriel
School of management, University of Bath

Forty per cent of Europe’s energy is consumed in buildings. To show leadership in meeting climate change challenges the EU must deliver agreement on the proposed energy performance in buildings directive prior to the Copenhagen summit (Countdown to Copenhagen: World leaders accused of myopia over climate deal, 2 November). To this end, I have joined key MEPs from all parties across Europe this week to press ahead with negotiations between the parliament, the commission and the member states in meetings that have run late into the evening. It is the nitty-gritty of heating, insulation and even air conditioning systems that ultimately drives our energy consumption.
Far from being marginalised in Europe, as some opposing politicians like to suggest, British Conservatives continue to play a key role in all areas of European legislation. Indeed, their only complaint should be that British Conservatives are continually breaching the 48-hour week.
Vicky Ford MEP
Conservative, East of England
• George Monbiot asks why climate-change denial is winning (Clive James isn’t a sceptic, he’s a sucker, 3 November). Could one reason be that what should be a careful and cautious scientific debate has all too often been replaced by abuse, on both sides? Examples are Monbiot’s offhand rejection of Ian Plimer’s book as a “concatenation of gibberish”, and his gratuitous rudeness in describing Clive James as a “sucker”? I write not as a climate-change denier, but in despair at the way the debate is so often conducted.
Emeritus Professor John Frisby
University of Sheffield

Independent:

I lost two uncles to German bullets. But if they died for anything at all, it was to live in a society where you were not browbeaten into wearing a badge or flower or insignia at certain times of the year (“Why should I be pressured into wearing a poppy?”, 4 November). Such societies are for the likes of Hitler. He for sure would have had us all wearing a swastika when we popped out to the supermarket.
I have always bought – and worn – my poppy with pride. But this is the last year. No longer. Blame it on the professional politician.
This year I spotted my first poppy as early as 18 October, worn, needless to say, by an MP on television. Not that many years ago, you only wore your poppy the start of the week before Remembrance Sunday: and now it has become a sick joke, with the politically correct BBC leading the way, with its blanket poppyitis.
I will still contribute to the collection box, because the cause is a right and just one. But I will not take a poppy. I suggest your readers do likewise. And that anyone donning one be told that they do not appear on TV with one before the Monday prior to Remembrance Sunday.
Dai Woosnam
Grimsby, Lincolnshire
Afghanistan, the new Vietnam
I served as a US Special Forces officer in Vietnam in 1969 and 1970. Our job was recruiting, training and advising Civilian Irregular Defense Group soldiers. It was painfully apparent at the time that it was impossible to recruit large numbers of indigenous personnel without also recruiting large numbers of enemy “sleeper agents”.
When remote Special Forces camps were overrun, it was often an “inside job”. Indeed, the infamous “Green Beret murder trial” of 1969 was largely the result of the execution of someone who was thought to be an undercover agent. I wrote about sleeper agents in some detail in my semi-autobiographical novel, A River in May.
The situation in Afghanistan echoes the unbearable sadness of Vietnam. Afghanistan is, like Vietnam, a war that cannot be won. My heart aches for the soldiers and bereaved families involved. We should get out now.
Edward Wilson
Chediston, Halesworth, Suffolk
Your editorial proclaims that “Karzai is burying our hopes of ever leaving Afghanistan” (2 November). Surely the very reverse is the case. When the Afghan President refuses to allow obviously false results to be reviewed by a fresh election in his country, this knocks out any sort of argument for keeping our forces in Afghanistan to protect him and his friends from the wrath of their enemies.
The war, which was foolishly entered eight years ago, shows no prospect of concluding with the establishment of a regime bearing any resemblance to a democracy. The cost in life is great, the cost in money similar. If the Americans wish to remain, that is their business, not ours.
Roy Douglas
Polegate, East Sussex
When observers visit bombed villages, they find in the majority of cases the dead civilians outnumber dead insurgents. In nations such as Afghanistan where loyalty to the family takes precedence over loyalty to the national government, every death, whether civilian or militant, acts as a recruiting tool for the insurgents. The more troops we send in, the more dead Afghans, and the more recruits for the Taliban
If we don’t change our policies in the fighting of this war, there can be no happy ending.
George D Lewis
Brackley, Northamptonshire
Of the two, who has the more genuine votes in support of him being in his present office, President Karzai of Afghan-istan or Prime Minister Gordon Brown?
Patrick Wise
Cirencester, Gloucestershire
Czech President speaks for Britain
For months David Cameron insisted that he would hold a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty despite everyone knowing that the Czech decision would predate it. Are we to take it that Mr Cameron has decided that the Czech President speaks for the British people?
Why is the Conservative Party still so indecisive and divided on Europe? Is it once more to be its Achilles heel?
Robert Stewart
Wilmslow, Cheshire
If Health and Safety allows you to attend a bonfire on 5 November, then take a pause to reflect that you are celebrating a defeat of a threat to our democracy. Now that there will be no referendum on the Lisbon treaty, unless the nation votes for UKIP, we have waved goodbye to democracy as we know it.
I suggest putting effigies of Brown, Cameron and any other MP you might feel deserves the same treatment on your bonfire and enjoying every last minute of it (democracy that is).
S Dandy
Yeadon, West Yorkshire
Climate cheaper than banks
On 2 November you rightly pointed out the importance of money as the key to success at Copenhagen.
Developing countries feel they need up to £245bn to reduce their carbon emissions. The European Union thinks £20bn would do. On 4 November you pointed out that Alistair Darling has given a total of £74.2bn to rescue just two damaged banks potentially wrecked by their leaders’ reckless gambling with our money.
It would appear that what is needed at Copenhagen for developing countries is almost petty cash compared with what has been thrown at failed banks worldwide to allow them to start another boom-and-bust cycle.
Have we become so selfish and uncaring for others that we see helping developing countries to reduce carbon emissions as too expensive, while protecting our potentially unsupportable lifestyle is essential?
Why don’t we start the proceedings by donating a paltry and easily affordable £20bn and request the other “developed” countries to round it up to £250bn and then get down to the serious business of when we might actually start to address the problem of global warming seriously.
John Atkins
Swainby, North Yorkshire
Now that the judges have concurred with Tim Nicholson’s desire to pursue his case for wrongful dismissal on the grounds that his eco-beliefs were akin to a philosophy or indeed a religion (“Green beliefs win legal protection”, 4 November), some of us may feel that our long-held suspicions have been confirmed.
Tim Brook
Bristol
University free of state control
State control of universities follows acceptance of state finance as sure as night follows day (“Labour’s campus revolution”, 4 November). The curious thing is that there is no need to take state cash.
Buckingham University has long demonstrated this by operating independently, without costing the taxpayer a farthing. What would surprise many is that, despite paying “full-cost” fees, the student is better off. The reason is that, while their peers in state institutions remain unqualified and building up debt, the Buckingham student is free to earn a full year’s salary.
All any university has to do to regain their independence is to offer the same contact-hours and resources over two years instead of three. All those libraries, teaching laboratories, lecture theatres, and support staff can indeed earn their keep instead of lying idle.
As an academic at Buckingham for 10 years, I enjoyed as much time reserved for research etc as elsewhere in my experience. In fact, that time enjoyed much better protection.
Dr Ian East
Islip, Oxfordshire
Sneering at New Labour successes
Matthew Norman’s sneering diatribe of 23 October contained the phrase, “the widespread loathing attracted by Blair, Brown, Mandelson, Campbell”.
Does this loathing arise from, say, the minimum wage? Can it be from 11 years of low inflation, steady growth and low unemployment? Maybe it is justified by the fact that only 600,000 children were lifted out of absolute poverty? Is it rage at the huge improvements in the NHS? It must be the decisions to intervene in Kosovo, Afghanistan and Sierra Leone – even Iraq? Or the abject failure to secure peace in Northern Ireland?
Has Gordon Brown’s successful advocacy of the way to deal with the recession provoked fury? Is Mr Average livid about the lowest basic tax rate, and increased cold weather payments?
Peter Metcalfe
Stevenage, Hertfordshire
You have to admire Gordon Brown: faced with more threats of replacement and only two credible candidates to take over from him, what does he do?
One, Alan Johnson, he sends to that traditional political graveyard, the Home Office, and Johnson duly makes a complete fool of himself over scientific advice. The other, David Miliband, he pushes as candidate for the new High Representative for foreign policy in the EU – which, if Miliband gets it, would take him out of British politics.
Brilliant! Now if only Brown could apply this brilliance to the country’s problems rather than his own.
Richard Carter
London SW15
Steve Richards again contributes to our need to understand the Iraq issue (“Blair is the only man for this job”, October 30). The decision by Blair was heavily based on political positioning. In seeking to understand how this happened it helps us all to know the influences at work behind the scenes, although it is galling for those who have lost loved ones fighting this war.
But Blair’s real genius is in convincing himself that he did it from a righteous conviction. Even today he remains in denial and goes from strength to strength, unaffected by the consequences. To be able to fake sincerity isn’t unusual in our politicians. It’s a prerequisite in a system of collective responsibility, and is in the former barrister’s repertoire. But to maintain it over an issue as large as the Iraq tragedy, to remain utterly convinced you were motivated by the best of intentions and not political positioning, is a truly remarkable skill.
James Richardson-Howell
Norwich
Churchill’s virtues
Brian Viner (3 November) comments that the portrayal of Winston Churchill in a television programme captured only his irascibility and not his positive qualities. Perhaps the scriptwriters should have heeded the view of Pamela Plowden that “the first time you meet Winston, you you see all his faults, and the rest of your life you spend in discovering his virtues”.
Gordon Elliot
Burford, Oxfordshire
Nation of alcoholics
The letter (4 November) from Peter Stoker of the National Drug Prevention Alliance includes the extraordinary suggestion that anyone who drinks more than 30 units of alcohol per week is an alcoholic. This would include people who have a glass of wine with their lunch and a glass with their evening meal, and the many who drink two pints of beer per day. If Mr Stoker is correct then most of the population of the UK are alcoholics and if he is wrong it is not surprising that the advice of so-called experts is being questioned.
John Rogers
London SW16
Ambridge actors
Jennifer Cowan (letter, 4 November) mentions four actors who played Dan Archer. June Spencer created the role of Peggy Archer but left the cast for a short time and was replaced by Thelma Rogers. When she returned several listeners said, “We don’t like the new Peggy.” When Robert Mawdesley died his part as Walter Gabriel was taken over by Chriss Gittins. Several characters have been played by different actors. Conversely, some actors have taken different roles; Arnold Peters, who now plays Jack Woolley, was originally cast as Len Thomas, Dan Archer’s Welsh cowman.
Garry Humphreys
London N13
President on trial
I’m surprised that in writing on French former heads of state to be put on trial your correspondents have overlooked Marshal Pétain. After all, until he was spirited away by the Germans in August 1944 his official title was Head of the French State. And he was tried, and sentenced to death (commuted to life imprisonment by de Gaulle) in August 1945. For all Jacques Chirac’s misdemeanours, it’s unlikely he will suffer that fate.
Michael Foss
Teddington, Middlesex
November japes
I grew up in the North of England, in York, but unlike Robert Ibberson (letter, 4 November) we never heard of Halloween trick-or-treating. We did, however, and unfortunately still do, have Mischief Night, which occurs on 4 November – no treats but plenty of tricks.
Lottie Alexander
York

Times:

Sir, I am a secretary and, according to the recent Kingston University study, it would appear that I have just demeaned myself (“PAs could be taking their work too personally”, Business, Nov 2).
You see, last week I noticed that a table in my boss’s consulting room had woodworm. So this lunchtime I went to Homebase, bought some treatment, cleared the table, dragged it along the corridor, put some newspaper down, turned the table over and blasted the blighters. I was between coats when I read Sathnam Sanghera’s timely article.
I agree with Kingston University’s findings that nowhere in my job description (if I had one) would there be any mention of getting rid of woodworm, any more than it might stipulate that I should catch rats (not that I have been called upon to do that — yet).
However, I spend far more time in the office than my boss, we had no patients here today and I felt it was a convenient time to get the job done. Oh, and if left untreated, the table would collapse. But how could I, of my own free will, have carried out such an inappropriate task? And the dark self-loathing should I continue to nip out occasionally to get a sandwich for my boss — how shall I endure it?
Anne Mould
Endon, Staffs
Sir, Sathnam Sanghera’s article stuck a chord. I have become increasingly concerned of late that my secretary of the past 38 years is inadequately titled when dealing with the personal assistants, executive assistants and panjandrums who assist my business associates and colleagues.
Considering the myriad responsibilities she dispatches with such aplomb, I turned to the Oxford English Dictionary, finding therein “factotum” — a jack of all trades. Inadequate, but when preceded by “dominus” it means master of everything. She is now my domina factotum (and considers this the final proof that I have lost the plot).
Anthony H. Ratcliffe
London W1
Sir, At the beginning of this year I faced the decision of either being made redundant or moved into a secretarial postition. I had graduated two years before with a first-class bachelor of arts degree but the job market was completely flat and my choices limited.
It is probably fair to say that the majority of a secretary’s day is made up of seemingly “menial” tasks. But if this is the more tangible bread of the job, the less visible butter is dealing with personalities and essentially being a tour de force of diplomacy, discretion and tolerance.
The 4am text messages or booking a director’s weekend away may have been what I moaned about over lunch but that was more to raise a laugh, not the sympathy of my colleagues.
Secretaries are in essence the professional housewife: they keep everything behind the scenes ticking over but will be the first to bear the brunt after a bad day in the office. And like a housewife, everyone thinks it is an easy job until they have to do it themselves.
In the end I realised it wasn’t for me either. Like many graduates I became a secretary not for a career, but a stopgap. But in developing skills, learning about a business and thickening my skin, it was some of the most valuable work experience I’ve ever had.
Emma Wilson
Michelmersh, Hants

Sir, The proposal to revive the Trustee Savings Bank (TSB) brand is welcome but it should be returned to local trustees, who were always the rightful “owners” of the Trustee Savings Bank before its amalgamation and flotation in the 1980s (report, Nov 2). Rather than a resale to the private sector, the Government should consider spinning off some of the state-owned banking assets to form mutualised and not-for-profit banks alongside a revival of the state-owned National Girobank as a consumer savings bank.
None of these non-commercial banks should have sold in the first place, as they provided a safety net for poorer savers needing basic banking without the commercial frills. The present-day rot at the heart of the British banks was aggravated by the shift of many non-commercial banks and building societies into the commercial sector during the 1990s, along with mega-mergers such as that between Lloyds and the TSB and the creation of HBOS.
Another name that might make a return to the personal banking sector is the Midland Bank, subsumed into the HSBC Group since 1999. It was always a well-respected brand and once the world’s largest bank.
Anthony Rodriguez
Staines, Surrey

Sir, While the driver on the M1 in the photo on the front page (Oct 31) seems to have been driving quite fast, it is a little unfair to say, as David Lovelady does (letter, Nov 4), that he was speeding: there was no speed limit then on motorways.
Nigel Moore
Wells, Somerset

Sir, In considering the aftermath of the ratification of the Lisbon treaty you suggest that a future British government should “use the prestige of the office of the British prime minister to win the argument that sovereignty rests ultimately with the people” (leading article, Nov 4). Given that sovereignty in the uncodified British constitution belongs to the “Crown in Parliament”, any radically minded government could certainly start at home.
Perhaps it could seek to change that uncodified British constitution by adding a bold assertion that “national sovereignty shall vest in the people, who shall exercise it through their representatives and by means of referendum” (article 3 of the French constitution).
Professor Stanley Henig
Lancaster
Sir, Why did Mr Cameron announce “no referendum on Lisbon” before the Czech President had agreed to Lisbon (report, Nov 3)? Obviously to pressure President Klaus to sign up. Just so, seven decades ago, in Munich, the British Government forced another Czech President, Benes, to capitulate to Hitler. Let’s hope that, this time, it won’t end as a world war with 60 million deaths.
George Stern
London N6
Sir, There is every reason to renege on a treaty such as Lisbon, which is fundamentally flawed because it proposes to change the destiny of nations without reference to their populations. And David Cameron has every reason to repudiate the deceitful manner in which the British Government signed this treaty.
No treaty, in any case, is sacrosanct. De Gaulle was right when he declared “Les traités sont comme les jeunes filles et comme les roses, ça dure ce que ça dure!”
John Gibbs
Mexico City

Sir, Today, of all days, is clearly the most appropriate to begin work on “Guy Fawkes Tower” — a purpose-built accommodation block comprising a one-bedroom apartment to be used by each parliamentary constituency MP outside the 60-minute radius.
Mike Dunton
Appledore, Devon
Sir, Sending parents to one of our overcrowded prisons for “stealing” school places is extreme (report, Nov 3). One cannot help but compare with those who have defrauded this country of tens of thousands of pounds each, for personal gain. They have merely been asked to repay.
Barbara King
Cleveleys, Lancs

Telegraph:

SIR – David Cameron is absolutely right. Following the acceptance of the Lisbon Treaty by the Czech Republic, it is pointless to hold a referendum to ascertain the views of the British electorate on its contents.
The only valid question which now requires an answer is whether the British people wish to continue to be enslaved by an unelected, unrepresentative bureaucracy which will operate the treaty irrespective of their wishes.
The sooner we, the people, have the opportunity to answer this question the better.
M. K. Padmore
Birmingham
SIR – The Lisbon Treaty has come into force without our approval. My country has been betrayed by a political class that has the arrogance to think it has the right to do with it as it wishes as though it were its own personal property.
I believe that the ratification of this treaty absolves me of any obligation to obey any laws emanating from Brussels. I swear by Almighty God that I will do everything in my power to destroy this undemocratic, authoritarian, corrupt and incompetent super-state known as the European Union.
Martin Armstrong
Tunbridge Wells, Kent
SIR – How can one register one’s rage at these Quislings of the gutless, so-called Conservative leadership?
Ronald Shadbolt
Nash, Buckinghamshire
SIR – Gordon Brown is reputed to have once said to Tony Blair, “I will never believe another word you say.”
The British people may well feel the same about David Cameron and his “cast iron” promise, and act accordingly.
Norman Dowsett
Gillingham, Kent
SIR – Cameron Cast Iron Co: “Please do not use our products near heat as they will melt.”
J. J. Mulleady
Petersfield, Hampshire
SIR – Cast iron? Tin pot.
Peter Norbury
Leigh Sinton, Worcestershire
SIR – The election must have started – people are already blaming Mr Brown’s betrayal in signing the Lisbon Treaty, without holding the promised referendum, on the Opposition. It was not Mr Cameron who sneaked across the Channel under cover of darkness for a private signing ceremony. Labour was in power and gave away most of our rights of self-determination to what is essentially a foreign power.
Sue Doughty
Twyford, Berkshire
SIR – Mr Cameron wished to be seen as the heir apparent of Mr Blair. His wish is now granted.
A. J. A. Smith
Glusburn, North Yorkshire
SIR – If Mr Cameron is to give us, the voting public, any say in our relationship with Europe, it must be on whether we want to be part of that curious collection of countries, or whether we reinvigorate the relationship we had with the Commonwealth and maintain that with the European Free Trade Association, an organisation of the kind which the EEC was thought to be at the beginning.
Howard Trill
Burnham, Buckinghamshire
SIR – With the ratification of the Lisbon Treaty and the inability of Britain’s morally corrupt and self-serving Government to give the public a vote on the issue, in either a referendum or an election, we are allowing ourselves to sleepwalk into a federal state.
No longer will Britain have a say in its own governance or most of its laws. With the stroke of a pen we are reduced to a county in the new country of Europe.
Politicians can tell us in patronising tones that they have done well for Britain in negotiating various opt-out clauses. This is all smoke and mirrors to justify their inept and foolish decisions.
Yesterday will be looked back on as one of the darkest of British history, the day we stopped being Great Britain and became a borough of Brussels.
As Remembrance Sunday approaches and we remember those who fell in the First and Second World Wars, one must ask oneself what their sacrifice to maintain Britain’s independence was for.
I despise Gordon Brown for what he has done to my beautiful and proud country.
John Hall
Malmesbury, Wiltshire
SIR – William Hague, the shadow Foreign Secretary, is an historian and an expert on the early 19th century.
Surely he knows that the Treaty of Amiens, which was signed in March 1802 and gave away rather more than the French deserved and rather less than they tried to take, lasted barely six months.
After realising that we had “been had” we withdrew from it.
John Parfitt
Painswick, Gloucestershire
SIR – What exactly is the point of electing yet another puppet government under Mr Cameron, Lord Mandelson or anyone else? Tony Blair once likened the Scottish parliament to a parish council. Will Westminster now be any different?
Hamish Macgregor
Ballylongford, Co Kerry, Ireland
SIR – Perhaps we should apply the constitutional guidance of John Locke’s Second Treatise on Government. If a sovereign government transfers the sovereignty freely granted by its ancestors to an external power without the consent of its people, it ceases ipso facto to be sovereign and thereby henceforth forfeits allegiance.
Since the outgoing Labour government agreed to such a transfer without the express authorisation that it explicitly pledged to the electorate, how can its signature validly bind its successor?
In so far as it directly affects this kingdom, the implementation of the Lisbon Treaty should be put on hold until the people are properly consulted.
David Ashton
Sheringham, Norfolk
SIR – Mr Cameron must know that every Eurosceptic Tory voter will have to think carefully about how to vote next spring.
The nightmare for him is that many will decide to vote for a party such as Ukip which will always press for such a referendum, thus putting his triumphal entrance into No 10 at some risk.
John Andrews
Doncaster, South Yorkshire
SIR – And politicians express surprise at the rise of the BNP.
Democracy divided by the denial of a vote multiplied by broken promises plus corruption equals extremism.
Chris Fickling
Nottingham
SIR – Depending on our postcode, we have between six and eight layers of governing bodies who decide how we should live our lives, and approximately twice as many layers of enforcers.
We have no idea who most of these people are or even to whom they are responsible. Today, democracy is just a meaningless nine-letter word that is supposed to keep us hoi polloi in line.
Brian Christley
Abergele, Conwy
SIR – Perhaps it would be best if the post of EU President was non-political. I suppose we could let them have a prince.
Alan Duncalf
Bampton, Devon

Irish Times:

Community projects under threat?
Madam, – Minister of State John Curran is planning the alignment of the Community Development Programme (CDP) with the local partnership companies. Following a (behind closed doors) review of the 180 or so projects in the CDP, it is anticipated that a majority will cease to exist, with the remainder to be swallowed-up by their local partnership company.
I understand the junior minister further intends to instruct those remaining CDPs to dissolve their voluntary boards of management to become advisory boards under the partnership – for one year only. The assets of the – then defunct – community groups are also expected to be transferred to the partnership. These community assets are in many cases sports halls, community buildings and drop-in centres developed over years or decades by many volunteers through sponsored walks, table quizzes, race nights, and so on.
At the stroke of a pen, it appears, the junior minister is proposing to commandeer these community properties and transfer their ownership to the quasi-State organisations that partnerships are.
We have heard of unscrupulous employers in the private sector, using the financial crisis to attack workers’ rights and conditions, but here we have an agent of the state – the junior minister – under the guise of financial cutbacks attacking the very independent existence of a vibrant community sector, in the face of stated commitments to the autonomy of the sector in government white papers and the active citizenship process.
While the Department of Community, Rural Gaeltacht Affairs, (commonly known as Craggy Island) has the very considerable power to withdraw funding from projects, it is clearly losing the plot in considering instructing autonomous projects to go out of existence. Many of the projects are in existence for longer than the funding coming through the Community Development Programme and many have a wider funding base too.
Of the 180 CDPs about 20 are local Traveller projects. The proposed development is particularly ominous for them, as many local partnership companies have proved to be utterly useless in supporting Traveller issues, when these come up against vested interests on partnership boards.
Along with the sweeping cuts to the Equality Authority some time ago, this is further proof of a targeted attack on participative democracy and dissenting voices representing marginalised communities. – Yours, etc,
THOMAS ERBSLOH,
Mullinavat,
Co Kilkenny.
Taking on the task of nation-building
Madam, – Elaine Byrne’s column on nation-building (Opinion, November 3rd) should be compulsory reading for everybody in a position of leadership and influence in our country today and a copy should always be at hand. I attended a conferring ceremony of the National College of Art and Design in the O’Reilly Hall in UCD on Monday afternoon to present a prize to an excellent education graduate. The future we present to these gifted young people is, as Ms Byrne infers, very bleak.
Her focus on an America with great economic difficulties striving to re-imagine its healthcare should inspire us to start living again and improve our society. The new RTÉ programme presented by Pat Kenny, with a deliberately divided and fractious audience, reflects our current state of national divisiveness. Is there any other civilised nation that allows its public servants to be vilified and seeks to create a spurious division between private and public employment?
We tried isolation for many decades, doom and gloom in the 1980s and now we seem hell bent on a decade of divisions.
Ms Byrne’s masterpiece was published on a day when the David Begg-inspired Irish Congress of Trade Unions recovery strategy provides an opportunity for national unity and recovery.
Seán Lemass ended the isolation; optimism eventually dispelled the gloom and doom, but it is surely in all our interests to end the current divisiveness. Ms Byrne is correct, negativity will not save us or facilitate the nation-building that will create a fairer and equitable society. – Yours, etc,
JOE MORAN,
President ASTI,
Winetavern Street, Dublin 8.
Whether or not to wear a poppy
Madam, – Each year at this time Irish society is forced to endure sterile and divisive controversy concerning Armistice Day, poppy wearing, and the commemoration of the thousands of Irish who died serving with British forces during the first World War.
Sheila Garrity (November 3rd) outlines her own reason for wearing the poppy and one should respect that. But Ms Garrity, as a Canadian, is perhaps unaware of the symbolism of the poppy here in Ireland which has a political subtext, functioning not just as a symbol of Remembrance but as a veiled propagandist attack on separatist Irish nationhood.
I wonder just how many of those in Ireland, apart from Ms Garrity, who wear the poppy to honour those who gave their lives fighting for the rights of small nations in the the first World War, will wear an Easter lily to honour those who gave their lives fighting for the rights of this small nation at the same time?
Ms Garrity may be unaware that public ceremonies are held in Ireland to honour those who went away to fight in the first World War and never returned.
One Sunday in July each year is set aside as the National Day of Commemoration whereby Ireland commemorates, with respect and dignity, all Irish who died in both world wars and on service with the United Nations. These ceremonies are attended by the president, taoiseach and the leaders of all the main churches and is both appropriate and dignified. Unfortunately this ceremony, which is devoid of the military jingoism associated with similar commemorations in the North and Britain, does not satisfy everyone as there continues to be a demand for the full participation of the Irish State in the annual Remembrance Day ceremonies of the Royal British Legion.
It is unfortunate that the sacrifice of these brave men and women has been used for many years as an emotional and dishonest basis for propaganda purposes by those who resented the emergence of an independent Irish nation.
I take the view that some of those who wear the poppy do so to antagonise the living more so than to honour the dead. I do not of course include Ms Garrity in that category, as her reasons for wearing the poppy are noble, dignified and honourable. – Yours, etc,
TOM COOPER,
Delaford Lawn,
Knocklyon,
Dublin 16.
Madam, – Could we have a new poppy which would emphasise our heartfelt desire for peace, while continuing to honour the dead? A poppy of red and white would be a graceful symbol, without too much political baggage. – Yours, etc,
CONSTANCE MORRIS,
Eaton Wood Avenue,
Shankill,
Co Dublin.
Men-only ruling for golf club
Madam, – I was saddened and disgusted to hear that Portmarnock Golf Club has succeeded in keeping its membership men-only. Regardless of the Supreme Court ruling, the words Portmarnock Golf Club will always be synonymous with a backward looking misogyny.
Imagine if the club was open to Irish men only, or to white men only? There would be public outcry – but nobody seems to raise an eye-brow at discrimination against women.
Ireland has changed since I left it 10 years ago, but not enough it seems. – Yours, etc,
KATHY BUCKLEY,
21st Street,
San Francisco,
California, US.
Cross-Border shopping
Madam, – I take exception to Alan Fairbrother’s comment regarding cross-Border shoppers (November 3rd), implying that this crippled Government, propped up by the Green party crutch, should cut income and supplements to each household in order to stem this flow of shoppers. Most of these people shop in the North in order to get value for their money, and survive these hard times, incurred through no fault of their own.
Perhaps if this Government led by example and cut their own salaries, fat bonus and expenses packets, then people might have incentive to aim for a greater goal and get this country back on its feet. – Yours, etc,
PADDY DOYLE,
Limetree Grove,
Cashel, Co Tipperary.
Funds for suicide prevention
Madam, – The suicide rate is up again (Front page, October 30th). Perhaps the Government would now explain why it failed to distribute the one million euros promised to suicide prevention programmes from the dormant accounts fund, money that I believe is not the property of the Government, and that applicants in September 2008 were told would be given out last February?
Compassion, imagination and integrity; how I would love to see leadership from people who could demonstrate even one of these vital qualities. – Yours, etc,
FRANCES KAY,
Director,
Last Call Project,
Adrigole, Beara,
Co Cork.
A deficit of fresh ideas
Madam, – Andreas Hess (Opinion, October 31st) urges Irish intellectuals, not only economists, to produce new thinking about the present and future of Irish society and politics. Has he reflected on the obstacles to their doing this in a sustained and adequate manner in this Republic?
There is no weekly or monthly magazine of ideas or any approximate equivalent on radio or television. The existing mass media have been engaged in an intellectual dumbing down. Notably, in their selecting of Irish writings for discussion and celebration, they attend only to the fictive kind – prose fiction, poetry and plays – ignoring Irish works of creative thought about human realities. Meanwhile, book publishers and State funding of creative writing practise a similar discrimination.
It is not an environment in which new thinking can develop or flourish. – Yours, etc,
Dr DESMOND FENNELL,
Sydney Parade Avenue,
Dublin 4.
Not in the mood . . .
Madam, – As if having to suffer the ever-deepening economic crisis, a Government that seems incapable of showing leadership, Nama, the dreadful weather, vision-seeing individuals and their gullible followers, swine flu, contaminated drinking water, a third-world healthcare system, deserted local Garda stations, no broadband, poor roads and an excuse of a public transport system (at least in my part of the country), were not bad enough, we now have to suffer the fast-spreading virus and witless awfulness of Jedward and the return of the Nolan Sisters to concert stages countrywide.
How much more can this nation stand? – Yours, etc,
PJ CURTIS,
The Burren, Co Clare.
Leaving Ireland’s ‘bankrupt’ shores
Madam, – I was dismayed to read the bleak contents of an article under the bleaker still headline “Ireland is a disaster . . . leave now and enjoy your life” (Opinion, November 2nd). I wish The Irish Timeswould report about those of us who are still here trying to make a go of it. I am a 26-year-old graduate (class of 2004), just about hanging on to my job.
I’m sick of all of the finger pointing. The Government was elected by the Irish people, who were happy to have them in power when the going was good.
Everybody needs to look at what each can do as an individual to make things better. Even if that’s just as small an action as considering the implications of how you use your vote. Let’s all take a bit of responsibility. – Yours, etc,
JULIE KELLEHER,
Glen Muire Cross,
Douglas Road,
Cork.
Madam, – What a bunch of whiners (Bobs excepted) have commented on this issue. The Government is to blame for all ills, never mind that we are in the midst of the worst worldwide economic crisis in 70 years.
The generation these people represent have had the most privileged upbringing of any generation in history, their education was paid for by the State they now deride and it is clear that they expected the State to go on providing a cushy lifestyle for them for the rest of their lives.
Where did they get this idea that anybody owes them a living?
Apparently they mistakenly believe that it should only be necessary to flash their third-level parchment to open any door. If they are indeed the “best and the brightest” as one comment has it, they would still find worthwhile work in Ireland even in the midst of a depression.
Most galling of all is the unstated: we are leaving and it is your loss. Well good riddance. With their attitude, their naivety and their lack of objectivity, they will not be missed if they don’t bother to come back. – Yours, etc,
JOHN MORAN,
Cordoba Oasis Village,
Riyadh,
Saudi Arabia.
Chomsky’s ‘end of Christianity’
Madam, – It is quite extraordinary for Naom Chomsky, who normally and so brilliantly dissects social phenomena, to equate the “end of Christianity with the defeat of Liberation theology” in El Salvador 20 years ago when six Jesuits, their housekeeper and daughter had their brains blown apart by Salvadoran forces acting under orders from the highest level (Home News, November 4th).
These Jesuit martyrs were indeed leading exponents of Liberation theology, but their martyrdom was not the deathknell of Liberation theology; that came about under the present pope when, as Cardinal Ratzinger of the Vatican agency for enforcing a reactive theology, he was instrumental in a bloodless but no less effective campaign which ruthlessly suppressed Liberation theologians. The good news is that, in spite of all this, the spirit of Liberation theology lives on as an expression of a renewed Christianity in Latin America. – Yours, etc,
BRENDAN BUTLER,
The Moorings,
Malahide, Co Dublin.
Combating climate change
Madam, – I am writing with reference to the article by Frank McDonald “EU leaders face heated debate on climate policy” (Opinion, October 23rd). We believe that the issue tackled by the author is of utmost importance and we generally agree with the views presented.
Nevertheless, we cannot accept such untrue and evidently unjustified opinions as: “. . . the newer member states in central and eastern Europe have proved quite recalcitrant – firstly, by declining to shoulder their share of the international burden and, secondly, by seeking to hold onto vast quantities of ‘hot air’ . . .” and further “This term refers to the tradeable bank of credits built up by Poland and others as a result of the collapse of their Soviet-style economies in the early 1990s. Potentially, these assigned amount units (AAUs) . . . are worth a fortune. But they could seriously undermine the international carbon market.”
Over the past 20 years, Poland has been very successful in effectively decoupling carbon emission increases from economic growth. It has considerably increased its GDP while decreasing the level of greenhouse gas emissions. Despite huge political, economic and social costs to the entire Polish society, Poland has taken difficult decisions in order to fully place Polish economy on a sustainable and long-term path into “green growth”.
Therefore, Poland feels that the opinions suggesting that the surplus of AAUs (assigned amount units) results from the collapse of Polish industry in the post-communist period are evidently unjustified. Quite the contrary, the potential surplus of AAUs in Poland results from the fundamental transformation of the Polish economy, including first of all policies and measures adopted by the Polish authorities and aimed at reducing emissions, improving energy efficiency and supporting innovation.
In this context, it should be also underlined, that Poland’s surplus of AAUs does not constitute any threat to the environmental integrity of the future climate agreement, as they will be exclusively used for environment- friendly projects, under the Green Investment Scheme.
Poland is also ready to take part in financing international mitigation and adaptation efforts in developing countries. This readiness is based on the conviction that particularly the Least Developed Countries require major assistance to face climate change consequences. It is worth underlining that Poland has no obligations in this respect under provisions of the climate change convention, but this readiness stems from the solidarity with poorer and more vulnerable countries. However, Poland believes that the international and internal EU burden- sharing of those efforts has to rely on payment capabilities of contributing countries.
Poland’s commitments to combat climate change are not taken on the basis of tactical considerations and calculations. We do not expect to make political profits or economic gains. Above all, we share a sense of global solidarity and responsibility – not only for our own country, but also for the entire international community. – Yours, etc,
ZBIGNIEW RUCIÑSKI,
Counsellor, Head of Economic Department,
Embassy of the Republic of Poland,
Ailesbury Road, Dublin 4.

Well I must be off

best wishes John

Jarvis

November 4, 2009 by johnblakey

Jarvis 4 November 2009

Rain rain and more rain, with a few pauses to build up a false sense of confidence that the sun might just be peeping out. I sweep some sodden leaves, Mary does not want the postman to slip and break his neck on his way to deliver the mail I quite agree, so spotting a gap in the rain I go out a scrape and scrape away. The leaves are most reluctant to go in the bag, they cling to one another and sneak out when my back is turned. The fair sun departs with indecent haste and an ice cold raindrop falls from the sky unerringly aimed for down the back of my neck. There thats done the risk of a postman with a broken leg lying yelling on the drive is much reduced. I am surrounded by a sea of leaves.
Puddy is annoyed, Kitten is in the kitchen, and Puddy can’t screw up enough courage to get past her. “Why don’t you go and show that Kitten whose boss?” I ask her. Puddy who was pinned up against the fridge and who had the most dire threats hurled against her, by Kitten yesterday; is not the least bit inclined to show her who is boss. She might well find out.
I go out and buy some soup for Sharland, damn vegetarians, though she tried hard to suppress it there is still a faint whiff of moral superiority about her. Though she would rather die than admit it. Jarvis on the other hand will eat anything, well barring stale bread and crisps. He trots straight in and straight into the kitchen observes that the door to the lobby is shut with all that delicious car food behind it and with barely a hello trots straight out again, has no one taught that dog any manners?
Hauled back inside He hunts around, around and finds a old rubber toy in the incongruous shape of a bright yellow bow tie. He does some half hearted chewing, I note this down for future reference once having stood on the wretched thing in my bare feet, in the middle of the night on my way to the bathroom. I shall not soon forget the clammy rubbery sensation which sent shivers up my spine.
Bored Jarvis wanders out into the hall we chat on for a bit and then as with children complete quiet being the most worrying sound of all, we go and investigate. Yes I knew it. I had carefully put the cheese back in the fridge, even Jarvis can’t get into the fridge though I have known some dogs who could. But he has found the waxy bit covering the cheese, there they lie, betraying bit of wax litter the kitchen floor. He looks downcast and scuttles off. With an expression of distaste I pic them up and throw them into the bin.
At last Sharland goes, and Jarvis is packed into the car a fare well wag of the tail, the cats slowly emerge from their hiding places. Kitten first with a swagger. “Showed him off, One sniff of me and he was off. I did, he won’t be back soon.” She sniffs the abandoned rubber bone with distaste, I know how she feels.

Postcards

Devon thatches, Devon England
http://www.flickr.com/photos/emperordalek/4070867051/

St Thomas Church and Square, Newport, Isle of Wight, England
http://www.flickr.com/photos/emperordalek/4070868003/

Colourful London, Buckingham Palace, Life Guards, Tower of London, London, England
http://www.flickr.com/photos/emperordalek/4070869011/

Ericeira. Costa de Lisboa, Portugual
http://www.flickr.com/photos/emperordalek/4070869809/

Palma Nova, Mallorcs, Spain
http://www.flickr.com/photos/emperordalek/4071634504/

Obituary: Claude Lévi-Strauss: French social anthropologist

Claude Lévi-Strauss was the last French intellectual giant. He was one of the greatest social anthropologists of the age, and his reputation spread well beyond the confines of his discipline as the most distinguished post-war exponent of structuralism, a mode of analysis which, in its more loosely defined forms, was a dominant force in the human sciences from the 1950s through to the 1970s and 1980s.
The name Lévi-Strauss thus became an intellectual touchstone, familiar to everyone from literature students to sociologists. The same often happened to the titles of his books: from Les Structures élémentaires de la parenté to Le Cru et le cuit, L’Origine des manières de table and La Pensée sauvage, they were for many years an obligatory part of the contemporary cultural baggage, quite irrespective of their often daunting intellectual difficulty.
Claude Lévi-Strauss was born in 1908 in Brussels, where his father, a painter, happened to be carrying out some portrait commissions. From the age of 2 to early adulthood, he grew up at 26 rue Poussin, in the comfortably middle-class 16th arrondissement of Paris. While Claude was given the traditional Jewish bar mitzvah in order not to hurt the feelings of his maternal grandfather, a rabbi, neither of his parents was a believer.
The household atmosphere was above all artistic. When money from portrait commissions was lacking, as it often was, his father would turn the home into a fabrics workshop. Claude himself produced several designs. Music was particularly important. It was a source of great family pride that his father’s grandfather, from Alsace, had been a director of the court dance orchestra under King Louis-Philippe, and the young Claude grew up knowing Offenbach by heart.
He also took violin lessons and composed small pieces for trio as well as the beginnings of an opera. Most of his later writings are shaped by musical structures and metaphors. Indeed, he perceived myth as a structure analogous to music: as he famously, and somewhat obscurely wrote, “myth and music appear as conductors of an orchestra of which the listeners are the silent performers”.
Lévi-Strauss made early contact with the two thinkers who would be the dominant intellectual figures of his generation, Freud and Marx. He became familiar with the latter’s writings at the Lycée Janson de Sailly, where a friend’s father worked with the pioneering French psychoanalyst Marie Bonaparte, and was introduced to the former at 16 through his father’s Belgian friends.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article6901508.ece

Letters:

Guardian:

I am afraid Giles Tremlett (Give a Commons seat to the member for Costa del Sol, 2 November) is on a hiding to nothing. We expats have always been regarded as slightly disloyal. If we insist on living in other countries – probably warmer ones with better food – we can’t expect to have a say in the government of our less-favoured relations at home.
The French and the Americans take a different view. As France – if you are French – or the US – if you are an American – is clearly the best country in the world, your compatriots who have the misfortune not to live there should at least have the consolation of voting in national elections. For the record, UK expats only had the vote for five years after leaving the country until Mrs Thatcher – assuming most of them were Tories – upped it to 20. Tony Blair then lowered it to 15, presumably for the same reason. I am afraid this is the best deal we are likely to get.
Henry Wickens

I agree entirely with your sentiments (Editorial, 2 November) that “these exercises in unpicking generations of pay settlements truly are daunting”. The issue of removing pay inequalities has been long and complex – but a challenge we have faced head-on in Leeds. The result of our review of more than 21,000 jobs and roles is that roughly 10,000 people have come out the other side without loss, while another 10,000 or so have had a pay rise, backdated to April 2008, and many of them are women.
Regrettably, there are some notional losers. However, nothing will happen to their salaries until 2011. During this time we are working with them to work out ways of minimising any losses they may end up suffering. That is how we have been equally imaginative as South Shields. We have also pumped an additional £8m into our pay bill. That doesn’t sound to me like us “slimming” our staff costs, as you suggest.
Your claim that we “will finally meet union representatives” is inaccurate. We have had numerous meetings with both the GMB and Unison over the last month (and before), which resulted in the council making an offer to the unions to bring the strike to an end. Our proposals saw potential pay losses for most staff eradicated altogether. Refuse collectors – bin men as you call them – would earn £18,706 and refuse-truck drivers £21,616. That’s hardly low pay. In return we only asked for them to turn up for work regularly, work a complete shift and meet productivity standards that many other councils have already reached. It’s disappointing, then, that they chose to reject our offer and continue to cause disruption to the people of Leeds.
Cllr Richard Brett

London may have got its first X-crossing this week (In praise of…, 3 November), but Britain certainly didn’t. Aberdeen has had several for at least 25 years, perhaps longer, and as far as I am aware no one went to Japan for the idea. In fact it is wholly possible that some observant Japanese visitor took it home with him.
Geoff McQuillan
Aberdeen
• There has been one in Balham for several years, and very well it works too.
Peter Bowen
London
•  I first encountered X-crossings 20 years ago in Auckland, where they were known as barn dances. They gave walkers a sense of freedom and entitlement rarely experienced in an urban area. Sadly, I fear Auckland has dispensed with barn dances to speed up traffic flow, but I hope we will see more of them in UK cities.
Sue Rumfitt
Former president, Institute of Public Rights of Way and Access Management
•  Simon Hoggart (31 October) doesn’t need to impose on his African friend in order to deter foxes with elephant dung. Paignton Zoo produces a compost/manure called Paignton Zoo Poo which I have used extensively – and never had a fox in my garden (to my knowledge).
Rob Parrish
Starcross, Devon
•  Your provide a list of top 10 hardbacks containing eight different publishers (Review, 31 October). But nine of the 10 books have the same recommended retail price, £18.99. Are collusive selling practices in the trade fiction or non-fiction?
David Lewis
London
• My favourite from the 80s (Letters, 3 November) was from Historians Against the Bomb: “We demand the right to a continuing supply of history.”
Alistair Edwards
York
• My guitar-playing husband still has his “Music lovers against the bomb diddely-bomb-bomb: bomb-bomb” badge.
Jenny Haines
Sandbach, Cheshire
• Sisyphean Rock (Letters, 3 November)?
Paul Hardy
Shrewsbury, Shropshire

There is a short-sightedness in this article (Afghans will pay the price for a man hellbent on victory, 3 November) that seems to think the story started with this election and fails to respond to the larger patterns at play. Hamid Karzai was implanted initially by the US in the lead-up to the formation of a new government in 2001. He was meant to raise an enthusiastic resistance to the Taliban and march on Kabul. He could not, and had to be airlifted by the US to safety, to be implanted later. He was widely regarded as a stooge. Many friends of mine joined his government, recognising his position as the best of a series of less attractive options. But as time passed, Karzai’s position became politically untenable with the Afghan people. US atrocities undermined his ability to be free-standing, and gradually he started to become less obedient. He began to get some local support for his stands against the foreign forces and political actors, and consolidated a local affection that he hitherto had not had.
As Karzai’s disobedience to the diktats of his erstwhile masters increased, so too did American and UN pressure on Karzai to step aside. It was, however, clear from the outset that, domestically, Karzai was now getting quite popular. So when the UN election procedure was suggested, the Afghan government was naturally suspicious and did not want to kowtow more than absolutely necessary.
The election was probably rigged extensively by both sides. But in that the very notion of a public election is a new idea for the country, that is hardly surprising. The question at hand is not whether the election was done properly, but whether the appointment of Karzai is legitimate. I sense that it is, because more people want him than want any other. Elections are one way to indicate this, but there are others too.
The best we can do for Afghanistan now is to offer a helping hand to the new government. To snipe from the sidelines and create the perception of illegitimacy because of foreigners’ failure to understand domestic political patterns can only destabilise further, and make recovery and the quest for equilibrium harder.
Stuart Worsley
Nairobi, Kenya
• Your editorial (2 November) on the farce that passes for democracy in Afghanistan is opportune. But it does not reach the obvious logical conclusion. The only sensible decision now is to pull out UK troops; the only solution to the problems of that benighted country is an Afghan one, unencumbered by western (American) interference.
Dr Michael Taylor
Leeds
• Hillary Clinton may wish to dismiss the connection between the growing terror crisis in Pakistan and the CIA’s continuing drone strikes (Report, 31 October). But, as Pakistan Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud boasted before he and his wife were killed in a targeted assassination, each drone strike brings three or four more suicide bombers. Targeted killings by the CIA are not only a source of great concern to the international community – Philip Alston, the UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial killings, has demanded that the US explain their legality – but the drone strikes are fuelling hatred of the US and eroding goodwill towards America.
Chris Cole
Director, Fellowship of Reconciliation
• I have written to the head of the UN expressing concern over the possibility of “free and fair” elections taking place in Iraq next January. Repeating the much-publicised vote-rigging seen in Afghanistan, since the last national Iraqi election in 2005, political factions have placed supporters on the Iraqi Electoral Commission to assist them in manipulating the result in the upcoming election. This self-interested action must be defused now, and I am calling on the UN to replace Iraq’s Electoral Commission with fresh faces, unaligned and unbeholden to the factions in Baghdad. This could take place immediately, with no disruption to the political process, and would give the best possible chance of a fair vote in January.
A free, fair and properly supervised election in January is absolutely vital for our country’s young democracy and the wider region. As has been witnessed in Afghanistan, failure to ensure a free vote is too damaging to imagine.
Ayad Jamal Aldin MP
Baghdad

Alan Johnson says he would like people seeking sanctuary to “pay their taxes” (Report, 3 November). So would they, if they had the chance. Labour has banned people seeking or refused sanctuary from working, so they can’t contribute through paid, legal employment. What a shame that people who want to work can’t. There is a wealth of expertise in areas where the UK has skill shortages. And at the other end of the spectrum, many people are willing to do the three Ds – dull, dirty or dangerous work that many British citizens, frankly, won’t do. Churches, and much of Britain, are proud of our history of giving refuge to people fleeing persecution and poverty. But it is demeaning to our national values for their skills and willingness to work to be left on the scrapheap. Let them work.
Alan Thornton
Church Action on Poverty

Independent:

My three-year-old granddaughter sat in a pink and black witch’s dress on Saturday waiting excitedly for her Halloween “guests” to arrive to receive the sweets that she had ready. A few eventually rang the doorbell when Daddy placed the prepared pumpkin head by the front door.
So yes, I can appreciate what fun can be had from this strange custom imported from the States. Where I would take issue with Philip Hensher (2 November) is that anyone who does not answer the door to a motley collection of “spooks” deserves to have their house pelted with eggs.
A few years ago my extremely houseproud mother was dying of a brain tumour in our local hospice. I never told her that just because she wasn’t at home on Halloween that year she had her front door smeared with rotten eggs and half a bag of flour poured through the letter box. An elderly neighbour, crippled with rheumatoid arthritis and unable to answer the door, received similar treatment. “Killjoys” who “deserved it”? I don’t think so.
Jo Palmer
Warrington
Halloween has its roots in the Celtic festival of Samhain. The Scots named it after the holy day of All Saints. It is surprising that your leading article of 2 November views it as an American import. It should rather be seen as the reintroduction of a British Isles native back into England. While it’s accepted that the Americans introduced variations on this Celtic New Year celebration, colouring it in more recent years with British Hammer Horror film imagery, its history as a Celtic native festival should be embraced.
Jim O’Keeffe
Newcastle, Co Wicklow, Ireland
Trick-or-treat an American import? Never seen 30 years ago except in films? Clearly you were not brought up in the North of England. In Sheffield during the late 1940s and early 1950s it was commonplace.
Robert Ibberson
Leeds
The experts really do know better
It is very depressing to read letters like that from Sheila Wright (3 November), which seems to imply that David Nutt believes that cannabis is the same as when he and his colleagues “were at University”.
Professor Nutt is still very much at university, and indeed is a world-leading authority on drug-induced mental disorders. Presumably that is why he was invited to chair the drugs advisory panel in the first place – not because of any romantic ideas he might have gained from the implied association he might have had when he was “at university”.
It is not just the Government who fail to appreciate that “experts” are experts because they know a lot more than the rest of us about their subject. No wonder we cannot have intelligent debates on important matters when attitudes like this prevail.
That is why this and any future government cannot dare to take sensible decisions based on facts rather than on prejudices. They would be crucified by the media and punished by the electorate. Don’t blame the Government when the real fault lies with us, the public, and the media.
Professor Tom Simpson
School of Chemistry
University of Bristol
Your correspondent Sheila Wright writes that “the cannabis on sale today is many times stronger than the drug that was around when Professor Nutt and his colleagues were at university”.
That’s because the importation, distribution and sale of cannabis is now almost entirely in the hands of organised crime (it used to be more in the hands of disorganised crime), who don’t care a fig for anything except profit. If cannabis were legalised (as I believe all drugs should be) then licensed premises could sell the much less potent and much more pleasant varieties that most smokers would prefer.
Edward Collier
Gotherington, Gloucestershire
Sheila Wright remarks that cannabis “has been known to be on offer at primary school gates”. Has it not occurred to her that if cannabis was legalised, regulated and sold over the counter like alcoholic drinks and tobacco products, there might not be any criminals touting it at school gates?
Ian Leslie
Ludlow, Shropshire
Bruce Anderson’s article (2 November), arguing in favour of the legalisation of drugs, omitted a vital item from his impressive balance sheet – the many lives that would be saved by proper control of quality. Corrupted drugs are one of the major causes of the death of young addicts before they have the opportunity to be cured. Let’s take quality control out of the hands of the criminal underworld whose only interest is profit and put it where it properly belongs, with the medical profession.
David Bowles
Eastbourne, East Sussex
As a scientist, Professor Nutt knows you must compare like with like. His comments that alcohol and tobacco are worse than cannabis may be true in some circumstances. But you cannot compare occasional use of cannabis with a low THC content to the daily use of skunk. You cannot compare the occasional glass of wine at dinner to an alcoholic drinking more than 30 units of alcohol each week. You need to take account of the numbers of people using a substance, how often, what strength, in what quantity.
Since so-called harm reduction was made central to UK drug policy, the use of drugs has escalated. For more than 10 years the strategy has not been to reduce use of drugs but to reduce the harm from the use of drugs. This harm has been centred around the physical harm to the user, and ignores the harm to those around the user – family, employers, health services etc.
This current furore may well be what is needed for drug policy to be re-written, with prevention of drug use as the priority and with treatment leading to abstinence from drugs as a secondary strand, rather than methadone maintenance being prescribed as the norm.
Peter Stoker
Director, National Drug Prevention Alliance, Slough
Teaching the fruit of research
I was absolutely amazed at the views of Emeritus Professor Frank Fahy of Southampton University (28 October) that research-led universities are to be criticised and discouraged.
I am no academic, but I have observed my university from the outside for as long as Professor Fahy has watched his from the inside. Research is a necessary tool for teaching by the best teachers. All the top research-led universities are valued and admired for their teaching. That is no coincidence.
Here at Sheffield, lecturers are actively encouraged to share their research interests with their students, which enriches both the experience of students and their learning of the subject matter. While it would not be true to say anyone can teach, nevertheless a lecture illuminated by the products of the lecturer’’s own research is a real boon.
Brian Wrigley
Chairman of Convocation, University of Sheffield
Bring banks into the real world
Slowly those living in the ivory towers of the western elite are coming to realise how immoral and unacceptable the existence of “bank bonuses” has become to the rest of the citizenry. Undoubtedly, the recent and consistent views of Mervyn King have assisted this perception among us mere mortals.
It is time for radical alternatives to be investigated and implemented such as decoupling retail and investment banking (bring in a Glass-Steagall 2 Act immediately). But far more is required to reassure those of us who will shoulder the £1trn UK debt ($13trn worldwide) created to keep these senior banking “operatives” in post.
We must consider public finance alternatives such as credit unions, mutual institutions and publicly owned and run retail banks to place competitive pressure on their private sector rivals. The latter should be broken up and regulated to benefit wider society, not to benefit the “commissions” allocated to individuals in those banks.
Martin Green
Skipton, Yorkshire
We need £3.6m to purchase a piece of land on which to build our much-needed hospital in the Dover district. Bankers are set to receive £6bn in bonuses. Discuss.
Reg Hansell
Shepherdswell, Kent
Filling up a finite planet with people
Sean O’Grady’s enthusiasm for a population of 86 million (“Zimmer-frame nation”, 22 October) perfectly exemplifies the proverb coined 40 years ago by Kenneth Boulding, President John Kennedy’s environmental adviser: “Anyone who believes in indefinite growth of anything physical on a finite planet is either a madman or an economist.”
The argument that looking after ever-more old people needs ever-more young people, who will grow old and need ever-more . . . etc is obviously an ecological Ponzi scheme which I thought Adair Turner had helped us all grow out of by now.
And then there’s “the economy”, the God to which its acolytes believe everything must be sacrificed. But our YouGov poll in June showed that people are more interested in their quality of life. Seventy per cent of us think population growth poses serious environmental problems in England (already the most crowded country in Europe); half of us would prefer a smaller population than we have now; and only 8 per cent actually want any more growth at all.
Roger Martin
Chairman, Optimum Population Trust, Wells, Somerset
This state hasn’t failed yet
In an otherwise positive piece in the Traveller magazine (3 October), I was disappointed by your description of Venezuela as a “failing South American state” which is increasingly isolated internationally, a claim of which it fails to provide credible evidence.
Venezuela enjoys excellent relations with countries worldwide. No country has broken diplomatic relations with Venezuela, and we are a member nation of the most important and prestigious international and regional organisations, such as the United Nations Organisation and the Organisation of American States. Furthermore, Venezuela has been a leading nation in promoting Latin American integration, taking on relevant roles in such organisations as the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) and the Bolivarian Alternative for Latin America and the Caribbean (ALBA).
As for being a failing state; by nearly all indices, including economic and those regarding quality of life, Venezuela has made considerable progress in recent years, achievements that have been recognised by international organisations.
Samuel Moncada
Venezuelan Ambassador
London SW7
Briefly…
Left and right
D S A Murray repeats the canard that the BNP can’t be right-wing because it’s “statist” (letter, 30 October). Since when was massive state authority and control a philosophy only of the extreme left? Murray might look up “fascism” in a good dictionary.
Michael Ayton
Durham
Tough acts to follow
John Walsh’s list of actors who have played Sherlock Holmes (2 November) excludes perhaps the greatest of them all: Carleton Hobbs. In the 1950s, on Children’s Hour, Hobbs, along with Norman Shelley as Dr Watson, brought Holmes to life. His voice was perfect for a radio production of the Sherlock Holmes series, the sound effects brought Victorian London into our homes and, best of all, the writers kept to Conan Doyle’s script.
Andrew Johnson
London W8
In Victoria Summerley’s article about The Archers (30 October) she implies that Lucy Davies, who played Hayley, was the only actor to be replaced upon leaving the series. The character Dan Archer, who died (in the programme) in 1986, was played by four different actors; characters were not written out whenever an actor died or left the programme.
Jennifer Cowan
Speen Buckinghamshire
All Latin to us
Pandora (3 November) needs to brush up on her Classics. There is no word in Latin meaning “rejoice” that could possibly be the basis of the Rooneys’ baby’s name, Kai. Was she thinking of the Greek chairein (“to rejoice”)? Perhaps the footballer was going to call him “Andy” but thought it would look better in Greek (kai means “and”).
Jim Hutchinson
London SE16
Soft pedal
I see from your quotes of the day (2 November) that the Palestinian president thinks America is “back-peddling”. Is that associated with the front page story on transplants of body parts?
J N Saunders
Shotley Bridge, Co Durham

Times:

Sir, You state that “building more and more roads is neither feasible nor desirable” (leading article, Oct 31) as if it is indisputable. Although high-speed rail is a valuable part of the nation’s infrastructure, it only benefits a select portion of the community. Only 20 per cent of journeys are taken by public transport, including those by bus and coach. Rail accounts for only 7 per cent of total miles travelled.
There is a limit on the modal swap from roads to rail simply because of the multitude of types of journeys made by road, whether for people or goods. No amount of public transport funding can change that. Financially, if road transport were to change completely to public transport the UK would be bankrupt immediately.
Your leading article seems to agree with congestion as a control and revenue function. A poor state of affairs for the future, where green technology is making road transport far more acceptable. It is convenient for politicians and media to accept blindly the lobbying from the public transport providers, yet ignore the needs of the majority.
Humphrey Squier
Rochford, Essex
Sir, There is no need to use any more land to increase the capacity of the motorways. We just build another motorway above, as we have done over the Dartford Crossing. Then the ground level section of the M1 could head north and the high-level section south. Ramps would connect the existing exits and service stations to the high-level section.
J. B. MacGill
Ascot, Berks
Sir, Two young men, a young woman and I drove in a little black car down the M1 soon after it opened, on the way from Bedford to St Albans. We came to a dense patch of fog. One of the men got out and walked just in front of the car for a mile or two until the driver could see the road again. We felt quite safe proceeding slowly behind our friend’s shadowy figure. This was at a Friday rush-hour time.
Philippa Russell
Birmingham
Sir, Some things have changed but not all (front-page picture, Oct 31). Certainly the amount of traffic has changed beyond expectations, but what have not changed are driving habits: the chap shown behind the wheel is clearly speeding and hogging the middle lane.
David Lovelady
Ormskirk, Lancs

Sir, So Adam Crozier has been given a £139,000 bonus (“Mail boss earns £1m”, News in Brief, Nov 2). Were I a postal worker, this news would make me more, not less, likely to join the strike.
Hinda Rose
London NW1

Sir, The arrival off the Devon coast of a vast shoal of anchovies and the subsequent efforts of the local fishing fleet to catch as many as possible before French and Spanish fisherman join the free-for-all (“Don’t tell anyone but fishermen netted £72,000 in two days. So where’s the catch?”, Oct 31) highlight some of the problems inherent in developing a credible and sustainable fisheries policy.
Fishermen cannot be trusted to show any restraint in self-managing fish stocks and will continue to put short-term gain before the long-term interests of the fishing industry and the marine environment as a whole. Allowing unlimited catches because there is no quota restriction merely encourages such short-sighted and rapacious behaviour.
It is blatantly obvious to anyone with even a passing interest in marine conservation that the current quota system is simply not fit for purpose and is leading to the continued and inevitable decline in European fish stocks that can only result in the eventual loss of the majority of fisheries-related employment.
Unless European politicians begin to act on the advice of the scientific community, rather than vested industry interests, the future outlook for the health of our seas remains grim.
Mark Whiteside
Stratford-upon-Avon

Sir, Your fine obituary of David Shepherd (Oct 29) surmises that the cricketing score of 111 is named after Nelson, who had “one eye, one arm and one aim”. Aficionados of the game know full well that the third of these is, in fact, a rather more physical attribute which, however, does also begin with an “a”.
R. V. Taylor
Abingdon, Oxo

Sir, Readers might be interested to know that the three old crocks featured on your front page on Saturday did make it to Brighton at their first attempt. The car was a 6.5 Stanley steamer dating from 1904, powered by the oldest recorded Stanley engine in the world. The owner was an emeritus professor of medical engineering from Cornwall and his “man” a consultant thoracic surgeon from Harefield Hospital. Despite the very heavy rain, water consumption of one mile to the gallon meant many refuelling stops en route.
Professor Colin Roberts
Mr Edward Townsend
St Buryan, Cornwall

Sir, I was horrified to read that Gordon Taylor, chief executive of the Professional Footballers’ Association, has said that his union will support Marlon King (“Footballer who punched me should never play again”, Nov 2). This arrogant and violent man, who is so bloated with his own self-importance that he thinks that women should be grateful when he indecently assaults them in nightclubs, has surely forfeited his right to anyone’s “support”. The PFA should rescind King’s membership immediately. This might send the right message to young fans and players.
Roger Slater
Macclesfield, Cheshire

Telegraph;

SIR – David Cameron is abandoning his cast-iron promise of a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty (report, November 3). If the Lisbon Treaty was unacceptable before ratification, how can it possibly be acceptable afterwards?
The British people are making it perfectly clear: they are unhappy with the surrender of government to an unelected, unaccountable foreign caucus. The only logical conclusion is a renegotiation of Britain’s position with the EU. The British have the right to be given the choice, and Mr Cameron will be punished by the public if he does not offer it.

We await with bated breath for clarification of the Tories’ statement on its website, which says that if the treaty is in force “we will be in a different situation, political integration would have gone too far, the treaty would lack democratic legitimacy in this country and we would not let matters rest there”. How exactly?
Anthony Tucker
Tremons, France
SIR – I accept that a referendum over the Lisbon Treaty will be academic by the time David Cameron hopefully becomes prime minister. However, there are plenty of issues over which a referendum on the EU could be held:
1 No further delegation of national governments’ powers;
2 No to the planned rapid reaction force;
3 Withholding Britain’s net contribution until the finances of the EU are reformed to a point where its auditors are willing to sign off on the accounts. This hasn’t happened in a decade;
4 Requiring a defined role for the President of the EU Council (so it cannot be expanded to suit the ego of the holder);
5 A limit to the influx of immigrants into Britain, whether from the EU or elsewhere.
Just a starting point for David Cameron, over an issue which could otherwise be a general election loser for him.
Phil Bailey
Crickhowell, Powys
SIR – David Cameron’s proposed promise to repatriate powers from Brussels to Britain is a familiar one: an identical promise has been included in every Conservative manifesto since 1983.
Perhaps Conservative apologists for such a disingenuous policy could provide a single example of a power successfully repatriated during the Conservatives period in power between 1983 and 1997?
In all negotiations, there is always the ultimate sanction: to walk away from the table. Mr Cameron has already ruled out British withdrawal from the EU as a matter of “principle”, effectively removing from the negotiating table the card most feared by Britain’s EU partners. Thus any repatriation of powers is wholly conditional upon acceptance by all the other EU members, a state of affairs which would seem highly unlikely to occur.
When Britain’s ability to decide on a policy which suits all Britons is constrained by our treaty obligations, and when the two main parties are in tacit agreement that this situation should continue, it must surely raise two pertinent questions: who governs Britain and where is the democratic alternative for voters who do not accept this artificial status quo?
Mark Croucher
Dartford, Kent
SIR – After 35 years, I am still not allowed, by any major party, to express my dissatisfaction at our ceding sovereignty to the corrupt and undemocratic institution that the EU has become.
Come next year’s general election it will have to be, very reluctantly, Ukip.
Dr A. E. Hanwell
York
SIR – Reneging is a game that two can play – David Cameron and his commitment to an EU referendum, and me with my commitment to vote Tory.
Don Minterne
Dorchester
Poor bank investments
SIR – What will it take for this Government to understand that when it pumps British taxpayers’ money into the Royal Bank of Scotland (report, November 3), much of it will leak away into overseas markets?
How can the Chancellor, Alistair Darling, make the case that this so-called investment is good value for British taxpayers?
Much of any beneficial impact will be felt overseas by other lucky taxpayers, not here in Britain.
Paul Harrison
Chelmsford, Essex
SIR – What an amazing spectacle the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix was. The only blight was not the lack of overtaking, but being unable to look at any part of the circuit without seeing an advertisement for RBS.
The British public owns this bank. How can it justify supporting Formula One at the moment?
If it is considered sensible to pour money into the sport, surely Silverstone is more deserving.
Mike Bradly Russell
Hitchin, Hertfordshire
SIR – Banks £40 billion; troops zero.
Ken Brownsword
Lowestoft, Suffolk
Non-drip kettles
SIR – Regarding your correspondence on dripping tea pots (Letters, November 2), in 1969, in the souq at Sharjah, I bought a kettle made by the Arabian Aluminium Co Ltd of Dubai.
It has an elegant curved spout ending in a shape like the open beak of a baby bird. I have not tried tea, but not one drop of water has ever dribbled from it.
Intended for use on wood fires in the desert, I last used it yesterday on a gas ring during a power cut.
F.D. Hoskins
Blandford Forum, Dorset
Restoring war memorials
SIR – In Woodbridge, the war memorial needed some repairs and refurbishment (report, October 27).
A letter was sent to every house by the Rotary Club and, within three weeks, through the generosity of the local people, the money was donated.
The work has been done in time for the Remembrance Sunday parade.
R. M. Burgess
Woodbridge, Suffolk
Fair elections in Iraq
SIR – Yesterday, I wrote to the head of the United Nations expressing concern over the possibility of free and fair elections taking place in Iraq next January.
Since the last national Iraqi election in 2005, political factions have placed supporters on the Iraqi electoral commission to assist them in manipulating the result in the upcoming election. This self-interested action must be defused now and I am calling on the UN to replace Iraq’s electoral commission with fresh faces, unbeholden to the factions in Baghdad. This could take place immediately with no disruption to the political process and would give the best possible chance of a fair vote in January.
A free, fair and properly supervised election in January is vital for our country’s young democracy and the wider region. As has been witnessed in Afghanistan, failure to ensure a free vote is too damaging to imagine.
Ayad Jamal Aldin MP (Ahrar Party)
Baghdad
Independence from MPs
SIR – The new body set up to establish the new scheme of MPs’ allowances will not contain serving MPs (Leading article, November 2).
The Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority will be made up of five members, including someone who has held high judicial office, a qualified auditor and a former MP.
Apart from the last of those, no person who has been in the Commons in the last five years may be a member.
Andrew McDonald
Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority
London SW1
Unwelcome advice
SIR – Surely the most sensible response from Alan Johnson to Professor David Nutt’s saying that cannabis causes less harm than alcohol (Letters, November 3) would have been to admit just how bad a problem we have with alcohol misuse.
Jane O’Nions
Sevenoaks, Kent
SIR – Prof Nutt has made the cardinal error of presenting his masters with the result they don’t want to hear.
The first rule of any contentious inquiry is to find out what result is required and to deliver that as the outcome.
David Laker
Stafford
All parents should have access to good state schools
SIR – Ed Balls says that it is unfair for parents to cheat to get their children into the best schools (report, November 3).
He does not seem to understand that it is totally unfair and morally wrong to force children to attend sink schools.
J. V. Boodle
Ipswich
SIR – Never mind prosecuting parents who, in desperation, deceive to have their children attend good schools.
The Government should be prosecuted for having allowed the state system to fail and to be so uneven in its standards.
Victor Edelstein
Wychwood, Oxfordshire
SIR – Parents are to face legal action for trying to look after their children’s education by flipping their homes.
Meanwhile, MPs are being allowed to get away with flipping their homes, and keep profits to the tune of £100,000 or more. What moral message does this send out?
John Bishop
Woking, Surrey

Irish Times:

Controversy over Nama
Madam, – The special purpose vehicle (SPV) is the latest worrying development in the whole sorry saga that is Nama. Who would have thought that a sovereign democratic Government – allegedly with the blessing of Eurostat – would resort to such unorthodox accounting practices? Similar practices are at best frowned upon, at worst, illegal, in the corporate world. They played a pivotal role in the multi-billion dollar collapse of corporations such as Enron and Worldcom – officers of which were subsequently prosecuted in the criminal courts.
The Government should reflect very seriously upon the possible consequences of going down the SPV road: 1. The enormous risks to our national reputation of being seen to employ off-balance-sheet accounting mechanisms – which markets and commentators generally interpret as attempts, by organisations, to misrepresent the true situation vis-a-vis income and assets. 2. The risks and complexities with regard to corporate governance and control of day-to-day decision-making and operations. 3. The clear risks of conflict- of-interest. What if either of banking or property developer interests, or associated parties, were to gain direct or indirect influence over the ownership and operation of the SPV? 4. The risks of unintended consequences – given that the SPV breaks new ground and opens a legal minefield in respect of company law.
Against all of which, the benefits are highly unpredictable and may never in fact be realised – because one way or another Ireland Inc will still own the Nama debt and international investors, unless asleep-at-the-wheel, will risk assess Ireland accordingly.
Please let’s row back on this one, before we make a bad situation worse. – Yours, etc,
JACK Mc DONNELL,
Dal Riada,
Portmarnock,
Co Dublin.
Sharing the pain of economic crisis
Madam, – I write as one of many State pensioners, with a great deal of anxiety due to a proposed reduction in my pension in the next Budget. I, and most of my fellow- pensioners, contributed over our working lives for this modest pension, unlike politicians who receive exorbitant ones.
Contrary to Government propaganda, the cost of living has not reduced and will increase again with increases in fuel taxes in the next budget.
We also have been told that our pensions are higher than those in the UK but, of course, no mention of the lower cost of living in the UK (as shown by the high number of shoppers who go North weekly). A British MP gets a salary worth €79,000 yearly which is about half of our own TDs’ salaries, despite cuts.
Our politicians claim they had no knowledge of the mismanagement of our economy over the past number of years which, of course, has led to the mess we are in now. Their ignorance suggests that they were not fit to be TDs. They should resign now and forfeit their exorbitant pensions.
I know for certain that we old- age State pensioners will not hesitate to vote when the time comes. – Yours, etc,
JOHN MCGRATH,
Burtonstown,
Balrath,
Navan,
Co Meath.
Taxing child benefit
Madam, – In arguing “Tax on child benefit fairest for low-income families” (Opinion, October 27th), Tim Callan and Brian Nolan ignore an obvious question: on whose income should child benefit be taxed? They ramble on about families’ incomes, but they should know that our system doesn’t tax families, but individuals. Which individual in each family should be taxed on this income? In my family, the child benefit for our three children is paid to me.
Although it goes into a savings account in my name, I regard it as my children’s money. It is earmarked for their educational expenses. My husband has no control over this money.
So, who should be taxed? Me? I have a very low income; even if child benefit is counted I’d owe very little tax to Mr Lenihan. Most of the mothers I know have no income; taxing them won’t balance the books. Or maybe my children should be taxed? They have no income other than the odd tenner given by their granny on birthdays. Would their contribution rescue the country from bankruptcy? I can’t see how fathers could be taxed, as child benefit isn’t paid to them. So who precisely should pay the tax on child benefit championed by Callan, Nolan and others (including Seán Fitzpatrick, previously of Anglo Irish Bank)?
Once the Irish tax system was based on the family, but Bertie Ahern and Charlie McCreevy axed that. This is the system they devised. It is deeply resented by many families, because it means that families with one earner pay more tax than families with two earners. Still, we have to live with it, whether we like it or not. Now the same goes for the Government that dreamed up the system. – Yours, etc,
MARY FEELY,
Sandpit Road,
Milltown,
Termonfeckin, Co Louth.
Whether or not to wear a poppy
Madam, – John McCrae’s poem “In Flanders fields the poppies blow/Between the crosses, row on row . . .” is unforgettably evocative. Forgetting the Irish dead in the first World War is an act of moral cowardice. Yet, I feel uncomfortable about wearing the British Legion poppy over my breast because it has become a symbol of British nationalism alongside the Union flag. Neither can I wear an Easter lily which is the Irish nationalist equivalent.
The poppy is, however, a powerful symbol of the horrors of war that has been given many different shapes around the world. To remember Armistice Day, on the 11th hour of the 11th day of November, and salute our fallen forefathers, Irish Army veterans should commission a local poppy design, perhaps incorporating a version of the Lions crest, the last remaining non-contentious symbol from days gone by. Proceeds of a poppy appeal should go to help support the welfare of Irish Army veterans of overseas tours of duty. – Yours, etc,
Dr BILL TORMEY,
Glasnevin Avenue,
Dublin 11.
Funding for Protestant schools
Madam, – I congratulate Ian French, governor of The King’s Hospital (October 29th) for having a scheme where 10 per cent of the school’s pupils from less well off families are funded by a means-tested Government grant which was available to Protestant schools.
This contrasts with fee-paying Catholic schools which wish to do exactly the same. Take for example Belvedere College SJ, where 10 per cent of the pupils are also from disadvantaged families, but in contrast the school has to raise over half a million euros per annum to fund the scholarship scheme. However, although this is not easy, especially at present, it does help to satisfy the school’s programme for social justice and enables these pupils to advance equally with their fee-paying colleagues to third-level education.
I am pleased that the Government has restored free third-level education because this will enable these scholarship pupils to continue their education, which they would not be able to do if this grant was removed.
However, I feel it should be means-tested so that more can be given to those who need it most. – Yours, etc,
IVAN HAMMOND,
Chairman,
Belvedere Social Services,
Georgian Village,
Castleknock,
Dublin, 15.
Madam, – Further to Cian Molloy’s letter (October 31st), perhaps a slight change of name from “The Church of Ireland” to “The Anglican Church of Ireland” or “The Irish Anglican Church” would help to confirm it as a forward-looking church, free from historical echoes and part of our modern, increasingly pluralistic society where there are a number of churches, none of which should claim to be “The” church of Ireland. – Yours, etc,
LES SERFF,
Calvià,
Islas Baleares, Spain.
Unions’ day of action
A chara, – Like Declan Doyle (November 3rd), I am a public sector worker and trade union member, but I fully support the proposed day of action on November 24th. I too agree that the problems we face in this country require a rational response. My rationale is very simple: the burden of the current financial crisis cannot be borne solely by public service workers. I have no difficulty in agreeing to a significant tax hike, as that at least has the merit of equity to some degree. The strike is not about simply following trade union leaders, it is a plea for an equal sharing of the burden from those who are already paying. – Is mise,
MÍCHEAL Ó BRAOIN,
Droichead Abhann
Uí gCearnaigh, Co an Chláir.
Madam, – Well done to Tommy Murtagh for his comments (November 3rd).
It seems incredible to me that the union leaders can be vilified for suggesting that social welfare payments should be protected in the current environment while at the same time a man paying out €200 million to his children can be seen as some kind of hero.
Let me add one comment. The Government is adamant that the expenditure cuts must all happen this very minute. Could it be that this is partly so that in three years’ time they can produce a voter- friendly “pre-election” budget? – Yours, etc,
DAVE ROBBIE,
Seafield Crescent,
Booterstown, Co Dublin.
Knock apparitions
Madam, – If the Archbishop of Tuam considers the recent antics of Joe Coleman at the Knock Basilica as degrading the praise and glory of God, then he should be factual that there never was an appearance at Knock in 1879. The continual charade at Knock by the Roman Catholic church degrades God just as much as Mr Coleman.
There is nothing wrong in praising God in any setting, nor in creating a special place of communal prayer; our pre-Christian ancestors used water wells, and Lough Derg as places of spiritual renewal. What degrades God in places like Knock is the Mammon- serving; ie the selling of relics and souvenirs, ironically made in atheist China. God has no favourites, rather He calls each person to be a living witness to Him. – Yours, etc,
DECLAN FOLEY,
Samuel Close,
Berwick, Australia.
A home for the Abbey
Madam, – Why, as proposed, move a building that is a symbol of art and culture on this island into a building (the GPO) which is a symbol of violence and diversity? – Yours, etc,
DEREK TYRELL,
Cromwellsfort Road,
Walkinstown, Dublin 12.
Getting feet off the seats
A chara, – Perhaps if the seats on the Dart were designed in such a way as to be comfortable, people would not feel the need to use the seats in front of them to keep themselves upright? – Is mise,
FRANK GORDON,
Harbour View,
Cliffony, Co Sligo.
Follow the labels
Madam, – Given David McWilliams’s apparant constant craving for publicity and his fondness for assigning labels to all he surveys, might I suggest that he is the father of a new variant of the “dismal science” that has recently appeared in Ireland: egonomics. – Yours, etc,
CIARÁN DOYLE,
Ashfield Road,
Ranelagh, Dublin 6.
When the Wall came down
Madam, – I remember when the Berlin Wall was being pulled down, there was an item on RTÉ news stating, “The Berlin Wall came down to the sound of a familiar voice”. That voice was Chris de Burgh, who had been personally asked by Chancellor Kohl to sing on that very important occasion. – Yours etc,
MAEVE DAVISON,
Tomhaggard, Co Wexford.
Palestinian access to water
Madam, – Dr Hikmat Ajjuri, the Palestinian Delegate-General, shows (November 2nd) a selective memory of the 1990s in claiming that Israel “never respected” the agreements reached between Israel and the Palestinians under the Oslo Accords. In blaming Israel for the failure to establish a Palestinian state he forgets that in 2000-01 at Camp David and Taba the then Israeli prime minister, Ehud Barak, made an extremely generous proposal for the sake of peace, offering the Palestinians most of the West Bank plus the Gaza Strip as a Palestinian state. Mr Arafat refused and precipitated the Second Intifada. It was this refusal that caused President Clinton to blame Mr Arafat publicly for the failure of the peace summit.
In 2005 Israel evacuated Gaza for the sake of peace, only to see Gaza taken over by Hamas which accelerated its terrorist rocket attacks on southern Israel.
Dr Ajjuri also suggests Prime Minister Netanyahu has no interest in an agreement with the Palestinians. Yet in his historic speech at Bar-Ilan University on June 14th this year, Mr Netanyahu stated clearly the commitment of himself and his government to a two-state solution: “In my vision of peace, in this small land of ours, two peoples live freely, side by side, in amity and mutual respect. Each will have its own flag, its own national anthem, its own government. Neither will threaten the security or survival of the other.”
In pursuit of this two-state solution, Prime Minister Netanyahu has repeatedly called for peace talks without any preconditions, calls which have been rejected by the Palestinian Authority.
Dr Ajjuri also accuses Israel of operating an “apartheid” water policy, with fresh water reserved for Jewish settlers in the West Bank. This is completely false. Israelis and Palestinians alike drink fresh or desalinated water; water shortages in the Middle East mean that there is widespread reliance on desalinated water and this has absolutely nothing to do with race or nation. – Yours, etc,
ZION EVRONY, PhD,
Ambassador of Israel.
Pembroke Road,
Ballsbridge, Dublin 4.
Drink-driving proposals
Madam, – It is unfortunate that the Healy Raes of South Kerry have become the public face and spokesmen for rural Ireland regarding the proposed lowering of the alcohol levels for drivers (Weekend Review, October 31st), as they provide light relief for urban-based commentators while letting the Government parties keep a low profile.
They also give free rein to the the Minister for Transport (with a designated driver for many-a-year now) to drive a further nail into the coffin of rural life as we know it and the rural pub.
For many years, this same rural pub has been the mainstay of Bord Fáilte/Fáilte Ireland in selling holidays in Ireland with pubs full of people, complete with pints of the black stuff and traditional music.
But Fianna Fáil has made it its business to wipe all that out when we include Micheál Martin’s draconian smoking ban.
It is unfortunate also that sneering commentators will latch onto such statements as “bachelor farmers coming down from the hills, driving to the pub”, adding “while ignoring widows, single parents and disabled people”. Whereas it is a fact that all of the above have relied on the rural pub as the centre for their local social life – be that politically correct or not – and are paying the same price as the “bachelor farmers” while, at the same time, the pub is acknowledged as the centre of the community and used by many rural politicians for their local clinics.
Statistics must be available somewhere to show that most, if not all, weekend late-night and early-hours’ road carnage incidents are of urban origin. That is to say, individuals who have been responsible for alcohol-related accidents departed an urban scene, driving over the legal limit (or even below it), rather than the individual driving home on a country road from his or her local pub. And this is the issue: the rural population is being made to pay for, and are most affected by, the irresponsible behaviour of young late-night drinkers driving home from night clubs in the country’s urban centres.
That distinction must be made, acknowledged and legislated for accordingly. – Yours, etc,
FEARGAL Mac AMHLAOIBH,
Dún Chaoin, Co Chiarraí.
Madam, – Would that the impending legislation to adjust the drink-drive alcohol limit should also make provision for both a zero-level of lobbying by industry and for the creation of an alcohol board. The current approach is to have many different departments address the fall-out from this drug, where and when it affects their particular brief.
Perhaps that board might then inform the EU that alcohol is in fact a drug, and have it re-classify the substance from a foodstuff, the howler of a misnomer behind which the alcoholic beverage industry has been allowed to officially hide for so long. – Yours, etc,
MICHELE SAVAGE,
Glendale Park, Dublin 12.
Savouring Jammet’s
Madam, – Some of your readers will remember Jammet’s, a venerable old establishment, in its day one of the top five restaurants in Europe. It opened in Andrew Street, Dublin, in 1901, moved to Nassau Street in 1927 (the current Porterhouse premises) and closed its doors in 1967, running for 66 of the most formative years in Irish history.
Advertised as “the only French restaurant in Ireland” Jammet’s attracted an international clientele, as well as its regular Dublin patrons. During the second World War soldiers on leave queued down the street to spend six months’ pay on one memorable meal. Louis Jammet, with his team of hard-working, loyal staff ensured that they, and everyone else, got just that – superb haute cuisine and a genuine welcome.
I am finalising a book celebrating Jammet’s, and would be delighted to hear from anyone with a story to tell or a memory of an evening there. Menus, wine lists, receipts and photographs are also of great interest. Readers can contact me by e-mail, alisonrmaxwell@gmail.com, or at the address below. – Yours, etc,
ALISON MAXWELL,
Spindlewood,
Johninstown,
Maynooth,
Co Kildare.
A new-age reader
Madam, – I’d like you to know that I am one of a breed of “new- age readers” of The Irish Times.
I read your paper every day, without the need to even come downstairs, when it suits.
I receive The Irish Timeson my new Kindle device. A very clever handheld electronic device that downloads your paper, as it hits the newsstands every morning. What I really like about it is that if I’m ever abroad, the device will still “download” your paper for me. As it uses the indigenous 3G cellular network of whichever country I am in, without any additional download fees for me, this is excellent.
I have also downloaded my first book on to this amazing device, Witness to Roswell: Unmasking the Government’s Biggest Cover-up. It is a fascinating read, but I’m unsure of its factual content – perhaps a moment of weakness on my part.
Rest assured however, I am warming very quickly to your paper’s style of professional journalism and hope to remain a loyal reader of The Irish Timeswell into the future, a place where perhaps, we will eventually discover if anything of substance really did happen in that place in New Mexico in 1947. – Yours, etc,
AIDAN MURPHY,
Maelduin,
Dunshaughlin,
Co Meath.

Well I must be off

best wishes John

Alone

November 3, 2009 by johnblakey

Alone 3 November 2009

I am all alone in the house Mary is off to her book group, to discus Keep the Aspidistra Flying, by George Orwell. I am all alone with the cats. Fluff has claimed Mary’s chair and is fast asleep a great furry ball, two green eyes peer out at me and close blissfully as I rub the top of he head. Kitten is in the middle of the fall likewise rolled up into a ball, but keeping an alert look out for you never know when danger might appear. Puddy is on Mary’s bed gazing wistfully out of the window watching the autumn leaves fall.
I ought to be sweeping up those leaves but it rains intermittently an its always more difficult when they are wet, and as Mary says there is a November nip in the air.
At the back of the house the wind whispers through the trees, ruffling gently the fallen leaves, raindrops bedew them they glitter coldly and laden with dew they are not as inclined to dance with the wind. The clouds turn gray and a dismal rain falls landing flatly on the already soaked leaves. The wind tries again blowing gently encouragingly coaxing but not a leaf bestirs herself. The fickle wind abandons them and goes to his old love the trees, but they too are leaden with damp and dew and less inclined to dance. Frustrated the wind whips around and blows as hard as he can, a slight ruffle a faint trembling, but all wet and stuck to the ground the leaves cannot dance with him today, frustrated he departs but I know he will come to play another day.
The sun peeps out pale and wan, the light a watery clear light and no warmth, the leaves glow briefly in the light, for a moment no longer flat and dull and wan. But animated for a brief second, glorious once again. But the sun doesn’t last, she hides herself away, she knows that her day is gone but it will come another day.
The magpie appears his feathers briefly ruffled by the departing wind, he looks annoyed, and quarrelsome, he fluffs his feathers preens a little and order is restored once again. He is all glossy black and dazzling white, he glares around, but on a windy damp day there is no one to quarrel with no one to fight. He struts up and down on the fence showing off, but this is only practice; his only observer is me, bore he considers for a moment then with a great leap he is gone.
A hushed expectant peace descends, quiet once more, a breathless hush, nothing stirs nothing moves all is still on dale and hill.

Postcards

Devon multi view postcard, England
http://www.flickr.com/photos/emperordalek/4068138656/

Rydal water from White Moss Common, Scotland
http://www.flickr.com/photos/emperordalek/4067388873/

Beck head Witherslack, Cumbria, England
http://www.flickr.com/photos/emperordalek/4067390157/

Llandudno, multi-view, Wales
http://www.flickr.com/photos/emperordalek/4068141890/

Mickey’s Florida collection, Florida, USA
http://www.flickr.com/photos/emperordalek/4068142786/

Bull Shoals Dam, Missouri, USA
http://www.flickr.com/photos/emperordalek/4068345155/

Obituary: Lionel Davidson: writer of The Chelsea Murders and Kolymsky Heights

The thriller writer Lionel Davidson was often mentioned in the same breath as Frederick Forsyth, both sharing the same love of in-depth technical and scenic detail. But his plots, in contrast to Forsyth’s, are much less violent, much more gnomic. Humour and love interest were salient features. The interaction of personalities was complex, yielding unexpected twists and turns in far-flung settings as a test of the reader’s wits.
His first novel, The Night of Wenceslas (1960), was published to critical acclaim and drew comparisons to John le Carré, Rider Haggard and Graham Greene; the latter rated him the world’s best writer of high adventure. This book was followed by The Rose of Tibet (1962), A Long Way to Shiloh (1966), The Chelsea Murders (1978) and Kolymsky Heights (1994). He received the Crime Writers’ Association Gold Dagger Award three times and was presented with the association’s Cartier Diamond Dagger lifetime achievement award in 2001.
The Jewish Chronicle regarded him as the “finest novelist” that Anglo-Jewry had yet produced, and some of his novels did have Jewish settings or characters: three occur in Israel, where he settled for a decade after 1967 before returning to London, looking for fictional stimuli after Israel ran dry. But others, including The Chelsea Murders and Kolymsky Heights, had no Jewish angles.
Lionel Davidson was born in 1922 in Hull, the youngest of nine children. He taught his mother to read; his father was a tailor and a union organiser. He began work as an office boy in London at The Spectator, which published his first short story when he was 15. He then moved to a features agency, honing his varied literary talents, which included fairytales and setting crosswords — a skill that resurfaces in his novels. He stayed in London after the outbreak of the Second World War, becoming a caption writer at the Keystone picture agency. He then volunteered as a submariner for the Royal Navy; oddly, this experience never reappeared in his fiction. He returned to Keystone after the war, then opted for photojournalism, visiting Prague, from which he was deported but which was later the scene of his first novel. In London again, he joined the magazine John Bull, doing interviews, including one with Oswald Mosley. He was also fiction editor, commissioning, inter alia, Neville Shute. He married Fay Jacobs in 1949
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article6899915.ece

Letters:

Guardian:

Your leader (31 October) misrepresents Conservative policy towards the EU. It is incorrect to say that Conservative party has “refus[ed] to co-operate even with European politicians with whom it ought to agree”. We have made clear that we intend to remain on close terms with our centre-right colleagues and we will work together in the many areas where we agree. One of our group’s first acts was to provide the crucial majority that President Barroso needed to secure a second term as commission president.
However, we also have far more freedom to deliver on our commitment of change in the EU.
We have long argued that the EU adds real value in tackling climate change. Your leader suggests that the climate change deal was not one that Conservatives support. However, I issued a statement congratulating the heads of government for reaching an agreement, as I, and David Cameron, believe that this is one area where the EU can play a vital role.
David Miliband thinks it is patriotic to encourage more Brits into top posts in the EU. Through our new group, Conservative MEPs hold the chair of the crucial internal market committee, I often attend the European parliament’s head body, the Conference of Presidents, and we have a vast number of our MEPs as vice-presidents and as influential “co-ordinators” on committees (who lead and organise the committee’s work). I believe we are in a strong position to fulfil our manifesto commitments – a notion that will not mean much to Labour when it comes to Europe.
Timothy Kirkhope MEP

Alan Johnson’s defence of his damaging and rather crass decision to sack Professor David Nutt (Letters, 2 November) contained errors of fact, as well as errors of judgment. Professor Nutt was not the home secretary’s “principal adviser”. I presume that would be a better description of Paul Wiles, the full-time civil servant who is the departmental chief scientific adviser. David Nutt was the independent chairman of the statutory Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, which is made up of a number of independent distinguished scientists, and some rather less independent police officers, among others.
If a distinguished scientist – following appointment as an adviser to the government – has to adapt his or her comments, depending on the government’s policy, then they are not independent.
When they become government advisers, the only additional requirements scientists take on – with respect to public comments – is that of confidentiality, and making clear that they do not speak for the government. David Nutt abided by his code of practice. Perhaps we need one for home secretaries.
Dr Evan Harris MP
Lib Dem, Oxford West & Abingdon
•  Note Alan Johnson’s subtle use of the split infinitive when he writes that Prof Nutt’s role “was to (unsurprisingly) present advice”. That placement of the “unsurprisingly” makes it clear that the advice was supposed not to surprise ie not to be critical of what government wanted the policy to be. Nutt’s error was not to realise that the science was supposed to back-up the policy, not contribute to its making.
Richard Kuper
London
•  The furore about Professor’s Nutt’s dismissal from the government advisory group on drug misuse misses a crucial point: the arrogance of the scientists in assuming that their scientific evidence is the sole, intellectually celibate, source of information upon which life’s decisions are made. It isn’t. We all make decisions partly on what scientists call “hard evidence”, but other types of information play into the decision-making process, like what Piaget calls figurative knowledge, or what constructivists call narrative knowledge. The scientists in this instance are transferring information from a distinctly knowable domain (trials about the risks in drug misuse) into a much more complex domain (taking decisions on behalf of the whole population).
Professor Kieran Sweeney
Upton Pyne, Devon
•  The only thing that puzzles me about the business of Professor Nutt is that he was unpaid for his work. Most other government advisers seem to be paid vast salaries for doing very little, and this is always thought to be perfectly proper. My advice to academics is to join the gravy train. You won’t get another chance.
K Vines
Yelverton, Devon
By the time WH Auden returned to Oxford to take up the professorship of poetry in 1972 he was not so much a bore as a broken man (Alan Bennett: why Auden the bore nearly turned me off writing, 31 October). I interviewed him the day he arrived at Christ Church. His battered suitcase seemed to contain only a bottle of vermouth, several packets of cigarettes and a sheaf of papers even more crumpled than his face. Yet he spoke movingly and with some distaste of the life of privilege he had led as an undergraduate, and throughout his tenure made himself available to students one afternoon a week in a nearby coffee house, something I believe no other incumbent had done before or since.
Don Chapman
Witney, Oxfordshire
•  As a cathedral education officer I naturally share Jonathan Jones’s sense of wonder at the astonishing richness of these magnificent buildings (Heavens on earth, G2, 2 November), but am baffled at his assertion that the Europe which produced them was “still deeply primitive”. Surely the buildings themselves, the art works they incorporate, and the sophisticated theology they represent, are clear evidence to the contrary.
Jeremy Muldowney

You note that while 37.7% of black students got a first or 2.1 in 2007-08 and 46.9% of Asian students did, the comparable figure for white students was 66.4% (Giving everyone an equal chance?, 27 October). There is a massive task to stop looking for excuses, although understanding the statistics is important, and to start challenging institutional racism in academia here. No amount of explaining away the figures can get away from that.
Keith Flett
Tottenham, London
• The assumption is that universities will take voluntary action and the situation will improve without any regulatory measures. Target-setting and quotas have really improved the situation in northern Europe. The Equality Challenge Unit findings could have been considered in light of the most recent scientific evidence. Instead, the piece repeats the boring mantra of the liberals, who wish for sophisticated solutions but remain anaemic in offering them. Sophisticated solutions are known. There is not the political or institutional will, nor the courage to realise them.
Mustafa Ozbilgin
Director, diversity and equality in careers and employment, University of East Anglia
The professionals
It really is a shame that Estelle Morris is evidently someone who has no faith in, and does not trust, teachers. (Whose advice will teachers follow? 27 October). In wondering how teachers will ever sort out good programmes from bad, charlatans from good practitioners, and fads from effective practice, she displays absolutely no confidence in their professionalism. Morris ought to get out more – perhaps to Australia, where teachers have being doing all the things she does not trust them to do for the last 40 years.
Dr David Taylor
Essex
Open access
After years of working through Open University courses, I am now giving up. I have managed to achieve a degree in that time, and was starting a second one, but the university is moving steadily towards a situation where only those with access broadband at home will be able to take part. Those of us who are restricted to public computers such as those at libraries, or to occasional use of one at work, will be excluded from higher education. I find it profoundly depressing that an institution defined by its mission to allow access to education for those otherwise excluded should now be working actively to exclude so many of us.
Anthony Calvert
Surrey
Diplomas exposed
Last week, Mark Sweney reported that the government’s diploma advert had been banned by the advertising watchdog as misleading because it said the qualification could get school leavers into university.
The government is playing with words and deceiving schoolkids without the history and understanding of university education that the middle classes have. I know an engineering diploma is unlikely to get you into Cambridge because they will be swamped with people who have done A-levels, with their much greater academic content and rigour. Similarly, a diploma in health is not likely to get you on to a medical course. It will be a tragedy if kids choose these qualifications under the impression that they are anything like what is claimed by the government.
SimonB
• Experience and knowledge of the rules is not something this government cares about. It is all about simplicity and ignoring the facts. Oh and, of course, make sure it is on the social networking sites so the kids who work for them can aim it at an equally unknowledgeable audience. Welcome to Confetti Britain.
lillybite1

Independent:

I agree with Bruce Anderson (Comment, 2 November). On every conceivable front, the legalisation of drugs presents itself as the most sensible, compassionate and logical conclusion. Most of our policy-makers choose to remain out of touch with the reality of the drug culture in modern Britain, although one in three British adults has taken some form of illegal drug in his or her lifetime.
It is illogical for drugs to be illegal on health grounds when alcohol and nicotine are not. There is an appalling toll of human misery caused by drugs, much of it by their illegality, not by the substances themselves. The international drug trade is worth about £250bn. Most of this goes to criminal gangs. If drugs were legal, their street value would plummet, making it impossible for organised crime to make huge profits and reduce the need for drug-takers to commit crimes to feed their habits.
I am a GP and have campaigned for years for a more liberal approach, a drug policy that recognises addiction as a sickness to be treated rather than a crime. Drug treatment can be truly effective only when the causes of social exclusion are addressed, including health inequalities and poor housing and training opportunities.
A sensible policy of regulation and control would reduce burglary, cut gun crime, bring women off the streets, clear our overflowing prisons, and raise billions in tax revenues. Drug users could buy from places where they could be sure the drugs had not been cut with dangerous, cost-saving chemicals. There would be clear information about the risks involved and guidance on how to seek treatment.
It is time to allow adults the freedom to make decisions about the harmful substances they consume. We need to learn from the studies and experience of Professor David Nutt to shape the policies on drug misuse. This government is alienating itself from the scientific community appointed to advise it.
Dr Kailash Chand
Chair, NHS Tameside and Glossop, Manchester
Of course Bruce Anderson is right. The war on dangerous drugs is not working. Have we not learned the lesson from the US attempt to prohibit alcohol in the 1920s, which spawned criminals such as Al Capone?
Before the Heath government agreed to support President Richard Nixon’s war on drugs in the early 1970s by passing the Dangerous Drugs Act, we had such a thing as registered addicts, and far fewer users of drugs such as heroin. It’s all gone downhill since then, with most prisoners in our jails there because of drug dependency.
John Marriott
North Hykeham, Lincoln
Professor Nutt’s credentials are not in doubt, but his pronouncements, while based on current evidence and statistics, do not give any credence to the emerging picture and its long-term implications.
The cannabis on sale today is many times stronger than the drug that was around when Professor Nutt and his colleagues were at university. The age at which young people start to use cannabis is much younger. Indeed it has been known to be on offer at primary school gates.
Therefore, the accumulated effects of longer and stronger use are still emerging, as are the links with psychotic breakdown. Any mental health professional, psychiatrist or mental health charity will tell of the ongoing rise in psychotic breakdown caused by cannabis use. It can take many years out of a young person’s life and has implications for adequately resourcing the NHS mental health trusts, as well as benefits for those who are unable to work.
Perhaps for once, by continuing with the present classification for cannabis, the Government is taking the long-term view rather than short-term expediency.
Sheila Wright
Ilkley, North Yorkshire
Has Professor David Nutt opened a can of worms that the Government does not want opened by stating that alcohol is more dangerous than cannabis and ecstasy?
The Government gains no revenue from the sales of illegal drugs, but it does receive a vast revenue from the sales of alcohol. This government has gone to great lengths to make alcohol available 24 hours a day and has done little to comabat its effect.
The money that the Government has spent on sensible drinking campaigns is a drop in the ocean compared with its revenue from sales of alcohol. The sensible drinking campaigns and the recommended drinking units seem to have little or no impact.
Kevin Roche
Plymouth
There is a political dimension to the classification of drugs which goes beyond the remit of Professor David Nutt or any other government adviser. The legal status of a drug involves important subjective matters, such as the freedoms of the many versus the potential suffering of a few.
If a downgraded drug becomes more widely consumed, the revenue of drug dealers will increase, along with their opportunity to supply more dangerous drugs.
Thus, drug classification has to be a decision properly informed by accurate scientific advice but made by an elected politician.
Dr Sean Munro
Cambridge
New Labour often advocated “evidence-based policy” to prove that it was interested in “what works”, instead of allegedly out-dated socialist ideology. It is now clear that if ministers do not like your evidence, they will ignore it, and sack you if you challenge their decision. The “truth” is whatever ministers want it to be. Rather like in the old Soviet Union, I guess.
Dr Pete Dorey
Bath, Somerset
The Home Secretary, in sacking his drugs adviser, seems to have decided to embrace the approach of creationists. They both have their creed (in the Government’s case, mostly handed down engraved on Stone Age tabloids) and where science disagrees with it, then science is obviously wrong.
What’s the point of having an adviser if they don’t tell you what you want to hear ?
John Hall
Telford, Shropshire
When Solomon’s son, Rehoboam, succeeded his father as King, he sought advice from his wise men on whether to continue Solomon’s harsh rule, and they strongly advised against it (I Kings, chapter 12).
Rehoboam didn’t like this advice, so went to his contemporaries who gave him the advice he wanted (to tell them “My father chastised you with whips, but I will chastise you with scorpions”). The result was disastrous, resulting in a permanent split in Rehoboam’s inherited kingdom.
Might our Home Secretary have something to learn from this?
CANON ANDREW WARNER
ANDOVER, Hampshire
Get troops out of Afghanistan
Thirty-seven of our troops were killed, and others maimed for life, to enable the recent Afghan elections to be held. We now see an already corrupt government that retained power by electoral fraud. The attacks of 9/11 were committed by Saudis and Egyptians, not Afghans, and our invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq has increased hostility to the West and reduced, not increased, our security.
The West should accept that it cannot win in Afghanistan and withdraw before more troops are lost in a hopeless war.
V Crews
Beckenham, Kent
Is it any wonder the West is seen as cynical and opportunistic? We had huge pressure applied to Afghanistan’s President Karzai because we could not be seen to be supporting a leader who has so obviously fiddled his election as President.
In contrast, the elections for the Palestinian Legislative Council in January 2006 were judged by international ob-servers to be free and fair. What happened? The wrong party won and the winners, Hamas, were banned even when a unity government with Fatah was established that year. Three years later, we still have the blockade of Gaza and the Israeli attack with all the misery and destruction these have caused.
Mike Barnes
Watford
Agencies ignore sex trafficking
Joan Smith (“Make no mistake: sex trafficking is real”, 29 October) provides a welcome rebuff to those who doubt the problem of sex trafficking, and is right in her assertion that women often won’t come forward because of the actions of the agencies who profess to be determined to deal with the problem.
Efforts to tackle sex trafficking are not working. We often find that when our clients have disclosed their experience to the UK Border Agency, they are disbelieved. We have also seen the UKBA instigating prosecution of victims of trafficking for immigration offences, leaving the trafficker free.
We need the UKBA and the police to step up efforts to give protection to those who have experienced sex trafficking. As the lead agency in the Government’s strategy to identify and make appropriate referrals for trafficked migrants, there is an urgent need for UKBA to take this responsibility seriously. We must not pretend there isn’t a problem when plenty of evidence says there is.
Caroline Slocock
Chief Executive, Refugee and Migrant Justice, LONDON E1
Dilemma for MPs
After MPs have been banned from employing members of their families, will an MP who marries his secretary be required to sack her? If, up until that date, she has been performing satisfactorily, will she be able to claim damages for unfair dismissal? If so, against whom?
Nick Collins
Godalming, Surrey
Start tapping, Arnie
The odds are stacked even worse against Arnie than those calculated by Jonny Griffiths (letters, 31 October). Characters such as o and u appear more rarely as first letters of a word than within words, bringing the odds of plucking just those seven letters down to one in 487 billion. Extra improbabilities of letters appearing in the right order lower the chance to less than one in a million billion. Arnie might have to type 1,000 emails a day for the duration of life on Earth to generate the offending acrostic by chance.
Max Beran
Didcot, Oxfordshire
Gracious thanks
Mihir Bose (26 October) is getting his Goons mixed up. The sitcom Goodness Gracious Me borrows its title, not from Spike Milligan but from his fellow Goon, Peter Sellers, who blacked up to play an Indian doctor opposite Sophia Loren in the 1960 film The Millionairess. Sellers and Loren recorded the song “Goodness Gracious Me” for publicity purposes, although the song did not appear in the film.
John Hawkins
Westcliff-on-sea, Essex
A lucky spell
How very wise of Philip Hensher (Comment, 2 November) to allow his young wizard visitor to deliberately mis-state the killing curse by saying, “Adavra Kedavra”. Obviously, had he pronounced it correctly, “Avada Kedavra”, there would have been a green flash, a vacancy at The Independent and a lifetime in Azkaban prison for our young friend. Whatever your view on the trick-or-treat phenomenon, no one wants that.
Stan Broadwell
Bristol
No class act
You ask in The Big Question (26 October) why so many pupils are making false allegations against teachers. I imagine that the answer is that there are no effective sanctions in place for pupils who do make false allegations. And what’s worse, teachers exonerated by the authorities could return to school to find their malicious accuser sitting smirking in class. Until society removes this weapon from the hands of an irresponsible, immature and vindictive minority, teachers and teaching will suffer, as will recruitment to an important and worthwhile profession.
Andrew Johnson
Ormskirk, Lancashire
Penny for a thought
So, will we never hear small boys cry, “Euro for the Guy”?
John Hawgood
Durham

Times:

Sir, A serious assessment by the Government is needed regarding the role of scientific advisory committees. Does the Government actually want advice that it will either heed or reject or does it merely wish to be seen to be able to have advice available?
Years ago I was invited by the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food to be chairman of a committee to examine the relation of nutrition and diet to heart disease. Gradually, uninformed bureaucracy intruded into our independent advisory activities to such an extent that, after three years, I resigned, vowing never to waste my time again on such a body.
Michael Oliver
Emeritus Professor of Cardiology, University of Edinburgh
Sir, Professor David Nutt should accept with good grace the Government’s decision to return cannabis to its earlier classification. His intemperate comments (report, Oct 29, and Thunderer, Nov 2) are profoundly unhelpful to those with a responsibility for the welfare of teenagers.
The extensive research of more than a decade was brought together by The Lancet in July 2007, which concluded that “Cannabis use in adolescence leads to a two to threefold increase in relative risk for schizophreniform disorder in adulthood. The earlier the age of onset of cannabis use, the greater the risk for psychotic outcomes.”
Professor Nutt’s panel will have had the same research material to work with, but advised that the drug remain in the lower category.
This expression of an informed opinion was all that was required of the panel. It was for the Government to weigh this opinion in the balance with other considerations and to legislate. The professor seems to believe the drug list can be an objective league table of the relative danger of different drugs and, judging by his comparison of Ecstasy and horse-riding (a comparison equally offensive to the parents of a child killed by either), he equates this with the danger of death to the participant.
I have good reason to be concerned about this blinkered view and casual disregard of other dangers. In 2006 my daughter was brutally murdered by a paranoid schizophrenic with a cannabis habit stretching back a decade to his early teens (report, July 14, 2007). Since then I have heard from parents who have had to witness the collapse of the personality of a child with a cannabis habit, as had the neighbours whose son killed my daughter. Parents and teachers need support as they exercise their duty of care in alerting children to the dangers of this habit-forming drug. The publicity surrounding the reinstatement of cannabis to Category B gave them this. With his prima donna outbursts, Professor Nutt seems determined to undermine their efforts.
Jason Braham
(Formerly Director of Art, Harrow School)
Dolau, Powys
Sir, Alan Johnson’s sacking of Professor Nutt makes a travesty of the notion that the Government accepts evidence-based expert opinion from scientists. Professor Nutt was simply clarifying that alcohol and cigarettes are responsible for more morbidity and mortality than cannabis and Ecstasy. Rather than suggesting that the latter are safe, his words, backed up by much evidence, underline by comparison the danger of legally sanctioned cigarettes and alcohol. For the governments that have long humoured the powerful cigarette and alcohol industries in order to pocket the taxes on their products, this righteous indignation smacks of hypocrisy.
Dr Leyla Sanai
Glasgow
Sir, Under the current drug classification, a 20-year-old convicted for smoking a spliff in a public place is liable to five years’ jail and an unlimited fine (report, Oct 31). A 20-year-old woman socialising with friends was subjected to sexual advances and physical assault by a self-professed millionaire footballer with 13 previous convictions, for which he received a prison sentence of 18 months and an order to pay an insultingly small amount of compensation (report, Oct 30).
Professor Nutt will be far more effective from his new position outside the wigwam.
Robert Hill
Harpenden, Herts

Sir, The French naval vessel Duguay-Trouin (letter, Oct 30) was not captured at Trafalgar, although she participated, firing into HMS Victory, Téméraire and later Africa. She survived Trafalgar by two short weeks before surrendering to Sir Richard Strachan’s squadron on November 4. She became HMS Implacable, on being purchased into the Royal Navy, and was later renamed HMS Lion. She reverted to her earlier British name in the early 20th century.
In the years of austerity after the Second World War it was perhaps inevitable that neither France nor the UK were able to fund the restoration of this, the only other surviving major ship of the Napoleonic Wars, but it has always struck me as a signal tragedy that the normal British procrastination could not have stayed the executioner’s hand until the advent of more propitious times.
Were some national figure to emerge proposing the raising and restoration of this famous ship, I am sure that there would be sufficient interest to finance the project.
There is no surviving example of a 74-gun ship-of-the-line, the dominant warship type of that era, and she would indeed make a fitting companion for the Mary Rose, Victory and Warrior.
John R. Harvey
Colehill, Dorset
Sir, Frank Carr, of the National Maritime Museum, was so distraught by the loss of HMS Implacable that he was inspired, in 1979, to found the World Ship Trust, a body that encourages the rescue, maintenance and preservation of historic ships. She remains its inspiration and the trust’s motto is “Implacable — Never Again”.
Two parts of the vessel were rescued before the demolition and are today displayed at the museum: the ornamental stern and the figurehead. At her scuttling, the charges were too large and only separated the deck from the rest of her, which promptly sank. The deck floated free, and, ironically, parts of it were washed up on the French coast, returning to the country of her birth.
Lynn Mallet
Executive secretary, World Ship Trust

Sir, Prince Edward’s remarks about the Duke of Edinburgh scheme (report, Oct 30) risk reinforcing the image that educational visits and school trips are dangerous.
At a time when there are legitimate concerns about a “cotton wool culture”, we should be focused on encouraging teachers and parents to get their children and pupils out and about, not suggesting that they may be in danger.
Risk is a part of everyday life and learning outside the classroom can teach children and young people skills to help them to handle it within a supportive and controlled framework, giving them important life skills to take into the world of employment. Educational visits form some of the most vivid memories from childhood. Taking learning beyond the classroom walls is known to increase attainment, improve poor behaviour and reduce truancy.
It would be a shame if parents and teachers associated the Duke of Edinburgh scheme, and educational visits in general, with dangerous risks.
Beth Gardner
Chief Executive of the Council for Learning Outside the Classroom

Sir, Antonia Senior (“An adulterer run my pension fund? Fine by me”, Opinion, Oct 30) says that, for her, a person’s adultery does not affect that person’s ability “to run my pension fund or represent me in Parliament”. This a perfect example of the modern/postmodern tendency to compartmentalise.
For the Ancient Greeks, morality was about good character as opposed to particular acts of goodness or badness. Thus, a person who can live a double life as an adulterer is likely to be dishonest in life generally. A person’s “private life” is likely to be very relevant to the conduct of their public business.
The Rev Stephen Jones
Carnforth, Lancs
Sir, Antonia Senior clearly has not heard of the actuary, accountant and lawyer who were discussing the pros and cons of living in or out of wedlock. After hearing the legal and financial arguments for and against, the actuary opined that the ideal would be to have an open relationship with a wife and a mistress. That way each would think he was with the other and he could spend more time at work.
Patrick Arbuthnot
Amersham, Bucks

Sir, As Kate Finch says (letter, Nov 2 , people should not still be dying of tuberculosis. In the 19th century it was recognised that spitting was one of the ways in which the disease was spread. Laws were passed prohibiting spitting in public places. Local authorities and the police should pursue spitters with the same rigour they apply to the owners of dogs that foul parks and pavements.
Any player spitting on a football pitch should be sent off immediately.
Jane S. Haworth
Thames Ditton, Surrey

Sir, I note that you appear to regard a couple in their fifties, the Chandlers, as “elderly” (Commentary, Oct 31).
Elizabeth Balsom
London SW15

Irish Times:

Unions’ day of action
Madam, – I am a public sector worker and trade union member who will not be striking on November 24th, or any time soon.
Before any of my colleagues accuse me of being a traitor in the camp, let me explain my position. I strongly resent having my salary cut to shore up entirely local economic and political failure. I resent the accompanying assault on my intelligence that there is no connection between my pay being cut and the failures of our leaders in politics, banking, and business.
I strongly resent being told “sure, we all lost the run of ourselves”. I didn’t, and neither did many of us in the silent majority. I am angry as hell with union leaders who fell into a trance whenever they got close to power and became addicted to the idea of being establishment figures on State boards. I am fit to burst at the prospect of a lost decade of social disharmony, and the idea that my children might be forced into involuntary emigration because another generation of incompetent unworthy politicians were too interested in “guide-lining” their pockets with money that isn’t theirs to take.
I understand and appreciate the frustrations of “24/7”, “9-to-5”, and all who watch helplessly as this society unravels.
However, the problems we face in this country require a rational response. What we are currently witnessing from public sector union leaders is a continuation of the strategy that brought us to this point, the soft option, the easy pass. When so-called partnership was booming, not one of our union leaders made the case for sustainability in industry, or demanded moderation in land speculation and bankers’ lending habits. This would have involved some hard analysis and real negotiation.
Instead they happily took their share of the mad bubble money, on behalf of their members.
If I am to march it will be for true reform of politics, so this disaster does not happen again. I want to march for unions that lead, even if that means being outside the cosy establishment tent. I will not expend pointless energy marching so that union leaders can then tell us, after we have stopped banging our heads off the reality wall, that we have to settle for a “deal”, worked out behind closed doors with Government “partners”.
I challenge my fellow public sector workers and trade unionists to describe to me the objective of a strike strategy. I openly dismiss anyone who marches without knowing why they march. Public sector colleagues have to stop shouting and start thinking. – Yours, etc,
DECLAN DOYLE,
Lisdowney,
Kilkenny.
Madam, – Your Editorial (“Strikes will solve nothing”, November 2nd), must be the most reactionary anti trade union and public sector piece of vituperation for a long time.
At the same time as I read on the Front page that the “Seán Quinn group pays out €200 million to his five children . . .to facilitate the development of their independent wealth portfolios”, why must I endure at editorial level such crude union-bashing as well as attacks on the Frontline Alliance?
In attempting to solve the fiasco that is Nama and the bailing out of the banks it is clear that organised resistance is the only thing that gives this Government any pause for thought in its tireless refrain that Nama is the only show in town etc.
The Labour Party and the trade union movement, equally tirelessly, have been trying to spell out the real economic alternatives that for some reason seem to have fallen on editorial deaf ears! – Yours, etc,
TOMMY MURTAGH.
Trinity College Dublin,
Dublin 2.
Madam, – I think it sad that, after decades of developing a more sophisticated and civilised form of industrial negotiations, union leaders now feel the need to resort to the outmoded method of strike action. Is it a case of when things get tough the tough pick up the ball and go home? – Yours, etc,
JOAN TIMONEY,
Grange Road,
Rathfarnham, Dublin 16.
A deficit of fresh ideas
Madam, – Andreas Hess rightly regrets the deficit of fresh ideas in Ireland’s public discourse (Opinion, October 31st). Maybe the Royal Irish Academy’s symposium later this month will help, Nama-like, to get them flowing again. But the delicate flower of good ideas may find it very difficult to bloom in the harsh soil of what constitutes Irish public debate.
At a time when our financial woes urgently require us to have a deeper appreciation of the meaning of citizenship, our ratings-chasing media are willing agents of societal divisiveness, amplifying the rude more often than the refined. Text and twitter soundbites are accorded equal standing with well-reasoned argument. Talk radio elevates individual personal experience above any notion of a wider common good.
At a time when one would expect some drawing from the deep well of inherited experience, our society seems unable to countenance solutions which might appear to emanate from a Christian value system. The public devaluing of marriage in the face of alternative family forms, despite the wealth of evidence of the societal effectiveness of the institution, is a case in point.
The problem may not necessarily be a dearth of intellectuals and ideas, but rather a lack of tolerance and of appropriate space in our public square. – Yours, etc,
MARK HAMILTON,
Foster Avenue,
Blackrock,
Co Dublin.
Public sector pay and conditions
Madam, – A prerequisite in the provision of 24/7 services are the staff who are duty-bound to work antisocial hours. Premium pay is an acknowledgment by employers of the impact upon our families and our health of delivering such services. While I provide a high level of care to patients, I am first and foremost a professional trying to earn a living. Seán McGrath (Home News, October 29th) and my fellow public servants in the Dáil doubtlessly consider me a cost as opposed to a resource, and I object to their attempts to undermine my ability to provide for myself and my family. Perhaps if Messrs McGrath et al worked public holidays, 26 weekends per annum and night duty at six- weekly intervals, they might share my opinion that premium pay is core pay. – Yours, etc,
SINEAD BROOKS,
South Circular Road, Dublin 8.
Whether or not to wear a poppy
Madam, – Fionnuala O’Connor’s article (Opinion, October 29th) may be true in its assertion that a piece of red fabric in the shape of a flower brings a small dilemma to some Northerners, however, I believe there are many living in the southern part of the island who are also in a quandary about wearing a poppy at this time of year.
In November of 2001 I faced my first Remembrance Day poppy-less, having immigrated to Ireland that year. Growing up in Canada, communities were awash with the red emblem and we recited John McCrae’s In Flanders Fieldsin schools. For my first few autumns in Ireland I missed wearing a poppy. I felt as if part of my identity as a Canadian was missing, and so arranged for a few poppies to be sent over. The first November bearing the “small piece of fabric” I felt very self-conscious, as if I was committing a cultural sin in my new homeland and would be chastised on the street because of it. I am pleased to report that five years of poppy-wearing in the west have gone off uneventfully.
Each person wears a poppy for their own reasons: some in memory of an unknown and long-dead family member, or for the nameless, countless young men who volunteered in naivety and innocence. Some wear poppies in support of those currently serving in battle and some, as I believe many Canadians do, as a sense of cultural or national identity. History says Canada entered the first World War with a colonial mindset and came out as a nation of its own. Its nationhood was forged on the fields of Somme, Ypres and Rimy Ridge. The graves in Flanders that hold the bodies of many a Canadian soldier certainly hold the bodies of many an Irish volunteer, Catholic and Protestant, Northerner and Southerner.
Many believe this annual tradition glorifies war, and I understand their arguments, and do often agree with them, however, I will continue to wear my poppy, in memory of those who died, far from home, far from families and in respect and pride of a young nation defining itself. – Yours, etc,
SHEILA GARRITY,
Portacarron,
Knocknacarra,
Galway.
A stake through the heart
Madam, – Nama for the banks, garlic for the Minister, and a stake through the heart for the electorate! – Yours, etc,
OLIVER McGRANE,
Marley Avenue,
Rathfarnham,
Dublin 16.
Madam, – If I was in David McWilliams’s company after midnight, I’d probably resort to the garlic also. – Yours, etc,
DECLAN GILSENAN,
Cuchulainn Heights,
Carlingford,
Co Louth.
Swine flu vaccinations
Madam, – It has happened again! In spite of ordering the swine flu vaccine several weeks ago, and the new campaign starting this week, myself and the local GPs still have not received any supplies. – Yours, etc,
Dr DAMIAN RUTLEDGE,
Park Avenue Medical Centre,
Sandymount,
Dublin 4.
Cross-Border shopping
Madam, – As a number of people believe shopping across the border is okay and don’t mind helping to prop up the UK exchequer, maybe Brian Lenihan and Mary Hanafin should take note and decrease the minimum wage, old-age pension and social welfare to UK levels? – Yours, etc,
ALAN FAIRBROTHER,
Glenvara Park,
Knocklyon,
Dublin 16.
Knock apparition gatherings
Madam, – Might there have been a hint of Father Ted-inspired irony in the Archbishop of Tuam’s hypothesis that Knock Shrine, faced with the prospect of a scheduled appearance by Our Lady, would be best served by retaining its authentic identity? – Yours, etc,
OWEN MORTON,
Station Road,
Sutton,
Dublin 13.
Prohibiting a budget deficit
Madam, – I would like to propose a constitutional amendment, which for the future, would enshrine in our written Constitution the legal prohibition of any government spending that would lead to a budget deficit for Ireland.
In particular, I would propose that such an amendment specifically forbid the State from approving spending that would necessitate tax increases later. Ireland would operate under an annually balanced budget because of spending restraint, not economy-damaging tax increases. This amendment could be approved now by referendum, and written to come into effect from 2013 or 2014 when our State books might finally be balanced.
Such a constitutional requirement would make it much easier for Irish politicians to resist interest group pressure, as the State could not legally provide for spending that would in the future contribute to a deficit. State actors would also have to be mindful of the deficit-creating threat that a future economic downturn could bring, if fiscal prudence were not rigorously enforced as a permanent national practice. – Yours, etc,
JOHN B REID,
Knapton Road,
Dun Laoghaire,
Co Dublin.
Storing knives safely
Madam, – There appears to be an increasing number of cases of knife violence in the home. The trend for storing kitchen knives in wooden blocks or attached to magnetic wall strips has also increased. Both storage methods are handy and not unattractive. But in the course of an argument, the combination of momentary rage and accessibility can be lethal. Using the “out of sight, out of mind” principle, storing kitchen knives in a secure drawer may save some, but not all, of the lives so needlessly lost in domestic violence. – Yours, etc,
PAM DOYLE,
Carrigtwohill,
Co Cork.
Leaving Ireland’s ‘bankrupt shores’
Madam, – On reading the comments published (Opinion, November 2nd) in response to Shane Fitzgerald’s views on leaving Ireland’s “bankrupt shores” (Opinion, October 29th), I am struck by the venom expressed by some of my fellow expats.  I refer in particular to the reference by “Jay” to “corruption in the Government, banks, business, police, law, and even the Catholic Church (Home Rule was certainly Rome rule)”.
As an accidental, and more recent emigrant to perhaps one of Western Europe’s most corrupt states, Italy – specifically the aforementioned Rome, I am stunned by the inaccuracy of this comment.  I live in a so-called modern country where the head of government controls six of the seven television stations and is ranked 49th in the Press Freedom Rankings (as opposed to Ireland’s joint first-place ranking). I live in a country where neither the dole nor childcare benefits exist.  I live in a country where the combined antics of Bertie Ahern and Charlie Haughey wouldn’t have raised an eyebrow.
Nowhere is perfect and there are many reasons why Italy is a wonderful place to live.  Just as there are many reasons why Ireland is a wonderful place to live.
Faraway hills are always greener, and perhaps my feelings come from the fact that my living in Rome is the result of a happy accident rather than forced emigration from the west of Ireland.
As the impact of the boom’s implosion continues, things do appear bleak, but people must be careful of believing that Utopia is to be found at the far end of a flight from Dublin Airport. – Yours, etc,
FRANCES ARMSTRONG,
Via Ignazio Persico,
Rome, Italy.
Cut in development aid funding
Madam, – The letter regarding aid funding (October 26th) seems to disregard the fact that Ireland Inc is almost bankrupt. Instead of pleading for a return to the profligate ways of old, the signatories should be asking the Government to aid smarter rather than to aid more.
The bulk of Irish spending on aid is in the form of government to government grants – the dogs in the streets of the third world can tell you that at least half of such aid money is trousered by local politicians and civil servants.
It is time to abandon this wasteful practice and to redirect aid spending to the Irish NGOs that have so distinguished themselves in achieving value for money. The result on the ground would be more aid for less expenditure! – Yours, etc,
TED MOONEY,
Milltown Road, Dublin 6
Getting feet off the seats
Madam, – The annoyance of Joe McBride in seeing Dart passengers resting their feet on adjoining seats is understandable. (November 2nd). Here on Merseyside, the local rail provider – Merseytravel – has adopted a zero tolerance approach to such behaviour.
Offenders are either given a fixed penalty notice (£60) or taken before the court. In the first six months of the scheme, started in February 2007, some 250 people were brought before the magistrates with a further 600 in the pipeline.
Despite claims that the rail company has adopted a somewhat draconian attitude to what many would consider a trivial matter, it does seem to be paying dividends. I travel on the network regularly and I rarely see such conduct now. Perhaps the Dart could introduce a similar approach and send out the message that they mean business? – Yours, etc,
FRANK GREANEY,
Lonsdale Road,
Formby,
Liverpool,
England.
The true spirit of Halloween
Madam, – Daniel Howard is factually incorrect in claiming that “early Christianity adopted many pagan festivals” (October 31st).
The Christian feasts, such as Christmas and Easter, had their own source, the teachings of Christ. They used elements of the pagan feasts. It was not the pagan feasts, however, that were responsible for the Christian feasts.
Christmas does not occur on Saturnalia, for example.
To the extent the phenomenon of coinciding feasts occurs at all, Christian holidays were introduced to provide a wholesome, non-pagan alternative celebration, which thus critiques and rejects the pagan holiday. – Yours, etc,
RUTH FITZPATRICK,
Lisburn Road,
Belfast.

Well I must be off

best wishes John

Bang bang bang

November 2, 2009 by johnblakey

Bang bang 2 November 2009

Its bang bang bang at unexpected moments damn these fireworks, and damn the people who set them off at unexpected moments. It makes the cats nervous, they shudder and cringe whenever there is a particularly loud bang. I don’t want to be a wet blanket but I loathe this time of year. Sparklers around a bonfire are all right but all these loud explosions are hard on the nerves. Its the peak busy period for the police this time of year.
When they are not leaping startled up into the air the cats are around peacefully. Puddy has even stopped going upstairs, though how a medium sized cat can ruck a large rug is beyond me, the number of times I have straightened it must be beyond counting.
It rains, a hard grim determined sort of rain, beating the fallen leaves flat and delicately embellishing the beak of the blue tit who despite the weather is stocking up on nuts from the bird table. When the rain does pause some idiot goes out and lets off a firework.
Kitten despite the rain still goes out on her patrol, she is rather predictable, I am afraid out the cat flap, shake head and blink away the rain drops, through the garden gate avoiding the puddles, and hop up on the the storage box, where she surveys her realm, down again and round to the back. Cautious. Curious for Apple the cat from next door might be here. Unlikely for big and brave as he is, master of the gardens of Roundhay, defeater of George the Cat Burglar, Apple doesn’t actually like getting his paws wet. An his home next door does not have a cat flap. So he has to cool his heels sheltering in the doorway as best as he can until someone notices him. Perhaps this accounts for Apple’s bad temper?
Kitten crawls under the Fuchsia the better to see and not be seen, though there isn’t much to see just the rain beating down. Then around past the roses, which drip cold drops onto small cats, and a quick run up the stairs on to the garage roof. Next doors dog is not at home, he is a visiting dog, and Kitten has learned that behind the bars of the fence he can be stared at with impunity. He would dearly like to bark, but is shushed by his mistress. Kitten would dearly like to hop onto the roof and climb up to the top to observe her realm but she has learned her lesson that the wet tiles are slippery and if you are particularly unlucky they deposit you down on to the thorny rose, where you will be a very sore cat indeed.
So she whirls around and carefully pads under the overhanging roses who have saved a few last drops for her. She pauses and shakes herself and its quicker now round the back of the conservatory. Where that man lazing as usual on his couch doesn’t spot you. She speeds around the corner, for the rain is coming on harder now, and a great leap over the puddle, through the gate and in the cat flap and a good wash in front of the warm air vent.

Postcards

Coniston lake, Cumbria, England 1963
http://www.flickr.com/photos/emperordalek/4063909076/

Ypres, interview of the Menin entrance. France
http://www.flickr.com/photos/emperordalek/4063909604/

The matador Manoletina Spain
http://www.flickr.com/photos/emperordalek/4063163457/

Tangiers adorned for the visit of S. M. Mohamed V
http://www.flickr.com/photos/emperordalek/4063911370/

Holland Stepping out together, Netherlands
http://www.flickr.com/photos/emperordalek/4063912272/

Obituary: Peter Needham: National Theatre actor

Peter Needham was associated for many years with the National Theatre and especially with historic productions by Sir Peter Hall. Needham had a wonderful ability to adapt to the style of a production and to focus his performance around the wishes of the director and the leading actors. This was demonstrated at the NT over many years and then with the Cheek by Jowl company, which he joined for several productions in the 1990s.
Charles Peter Needham attended Becket Grammar School in Nottingham and later, while working in the council offices, he spent most evenings with an amateur dramatic society. In 1952 he decided to concentrate on the theatre and won a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. In 1955 he joined the Old Vic Company and toured with it to Canada where he stayed for three years, joining a touring company. In 1962 he returned to Britain and found work in several repertory companies.
It was in 1970 that Needham joined the NT and became a stalwart of the company for 15 years. He was in acclaimed productions — The Tempest and The Misanthrope in particular — at the Old Vic before the company moved to the South Bank. He was in both opening productions — Hamlet and Tamburlaine — which Hall directed, with Albert Finney playing the lead in both. In fact, the Hamlet opened at the Old Vic in 1975 and then transferred to the Olivier (with Needham as Reynaldo). He had two roles in Tamburlaine at the Olivier in 1976.
In his diaries for 1976 Hall displays some concern for the Tamburlaine — he wrote after one rehearsal it was “dull and dead”. The company, led by Finney and Denis Quilley, did an hour of the play on an outside terrace and it suddenly came alive. Hall wrote:
“Peter Needham up on the concrete battlements as the Governor of Damascus suddenly became full of power, full of emotion.”
Other productions for the NT included the controversial The Romans in Britain, Julius Caesar (John Schlesinger’s production with Sir John Gielgud), Brand (with Patience Collier), The Duchess of Malfi (with Sir Ian McKellen) and, most recently, Katie Mitchell’s production of The Three Sisters. Needham toured with Not The National Theatre and directed its double bill of Harold Pinter’s The Dumb Waiter and John Mortimer’s The Dock Brief in 1984.
From 1991-94 he was with Cheek by Jowl and was particularly distinguished as Touchstone in Declan Donellan’s all-male As You Like It. When the play toured America one critic commented: “Needham’s Touchstone is a weary, leadenly tap-dancing entertainer rejuvenated by rustic life.”
Work in television ranged from Churchill’s People, Special Branch and Bouquet of Barbed Wire to Up Pompeii and The Kenny Everett Show. He appeared in the movie Before the Rain in 2001, which won the Oscar for Best Foreign Film.
Needham is survived by his wife, Jane, and three children from his first marriage and two from his second.
Peter Needham, actor, was born on August 20, 1932. He died on August 7, 2009, aged 76

Letters:

Guardian:

While agreeing with the sentiments of the letter on equal pay (30 October), there remains one major problem, as illustrated by the strike by Leeds refuse disposal workers. In local government and the NHS “agenda for change” job evaluation exercises, the equalisation of pay is being funded by taking money away from other poorly paid workers. When I used to negotiate job evaluation schemes in the private sector I would always insist it should be done on a no-loss basis. This approach seems to have been forfeited by the unions in the public sector, with the cost of equality being paid on the basis of robbing Peter to pay Paulette. Surely the best way to do this is on the Robin Hood principle of robbing or, at least taxing, the rich to pay the poor, thereby securing greater equality all round.
John Fisher

Your leader on drugs policy (Shooting up the messenger, 31 October) is long on righteous indignation but short on logic.
Professor Nutt is indeed a reputable scientist whose views on drugs policy are well known. However, his role as my principal adviser was to (unsurprisingly) present advice. It is the job of the government to decide policy.
Professor Nutt was not sacked for his views, which I respect but disagree with (as does Professor Robin Murray, who wrote in your newspaper on Friday).
He was asked to go because he cannot be both a government adviser and a campaigner against government policy. This principle is well understood and long established.
As for his comments about horse riding being more dangerous than ecstasy, which you quote with such reverence, it is of course a political rather than a scientific point. There are not many kids in my constituency in danger of falling off a horse – there are thousands at risk of being sucked into a world of hopeless despair through drug addiction.
Alan Johnson MP
Home secretary
•  Yes, it’s clearly wrong that Professor David Nutt has been sacked by Alan Johnson for expressing legitimate opinions on drugs policy (Chief drug adviser sacked over cannabis stance, 31 October). On balance, I happen to agree with Nutt on the classification of cannabis as class C, but I do think he is guilty of the same “populism” of which your leader accuses the government. Over the decades I have got tired of hearing from my more hoarse-voiced friends that “alcohol and tobacco are worse than dope”, as they happily roll a spliff, drink at hand next to an overflowing ashtray. That kind of complacency across the whole range of potentially addictive and damaging substances is only reinforced when experts such as Nutt make headline-grabbing interventions which have the effect of downplaying the dangers of them all. We all know alcohol and tobacco are never going to get a dangerous drug classification, for all the obvious historic and cultural reasons, so it doesn’t actually help clarify the very real public health issues associated with drugs to make distracting comparisons in this way.
Giles Oakley
London
•  Professor Nutt has been sacked from the government’s expert advisory body (ACMD) for telling the media that his review of the scientific evidence shows that cannabis, ecstasy and LSD are less harmful than alcohol and tobacco. Since the ACMD was set up in 1971, UK governments have nearly always acted upon their advice – until recently. In 2008 they rejected the ACMD’s advice that cannabis should stay in class C; and in 2009 they rejected their advice that ecstasy should be downgraded to class B. In short, despite claiming that our drug policy is now evidence-based, these government responses show they cannot cope with the truth about drugs even from their own advisers! The nasty, corrupt beast of drug prohibition is in its death throes, and the government has betrayed its realisation of this fact by its panicky efforts to silence its own experts.
Dr Russell Newcombe
Senior researcher, Lifeline Project
•  In 2006 our paper in “Globalisation, societies and education” lamented government control and abuse of British academics’ research. We argued that the government’s commitment to “evidence-based policy” is, in fact, a chimera. The immediate rejection of the findings of the Cambridge University review of primary education led by Professor Robin Alexander (Report, 24 October) and the sacking of Professor David Nutt ably demonstrate that only policy-based evidence is acceptable. QED.
Professor Rebecca Boden Cardiff school of management, University of Wales Institute, Cardiff
Professor Debbie Epstein School of social sciences, Cardiff University
•  After having sacked a senior scientific adviser for telling the truth, does Alan Johnson really believe that George Orwell would have accepted his invitation to a “dream dinner party” (Q&A, Weekend, 24 October)?
Dr Allan Dodds
Bramcote, Nottinghamshire

Roy Hattersley asks for the justification for prohibiting the formidable Lady Campbell from running Sir Ming’s Edinburgh office (Kelly’s irrational expenses rules are set only to appease, 29 October). I’m surprised and disappointed he doesn’t think equality of opportunities, a cause he has long advocated, is a good enough reason. Given the overwhelmingly white composition of the Commons, what chance does an extremely able non-white candidate have of securing these publicly funded posts?
In any other branch of the public sector, such nepotism would simply not be accepted. In both public and private sectors, a system of recruitment that so blatantly discriminates against people from ethnic minorities would be the subject of legal action. Sir Roy’s comments only further the view that parliamentarians past and present still don’t get it. They seem to view themselves as a breed apart from the rest of society and above the laws they make for the rest of us.
Ian Simpson
London
• It appears that Sir Christopher Kelly will be recommending that MPs will only be allowed to rent second homes in the future (Kelly slashes ‘golden goodbye’ handouts under tough reforms, 29 October). I would like to reassure MPs they have nothing to fear from joining the other 3.3 million privately rented households who rent property from us landlords. In fact, I am quite certain that many landlords would jump at the chance to rent their property to some MPs. It might help broaden their understanding of what a contribution the private-rented sector makes to the country’s housing mix.
David Salusbury
Chairman, National Landlords Association

I received a high court injunction without notice when helping to save the Oxfordshire lake from Npower (High court injunction – the weapon of choice to slap down protests, 28 October; Otter-spotting and birdwatching: the dark heart of the eco-terrorist peril, 23 December 2008). The anonymous accusation – that I drove my car into a security guard when I was actually at home writing emails – once discovered, was too expensive to defend in court. Instead I was named and shamed for something I did not do and for two years was prevented from visiting the beautiful lake we saved by entirely legal means. I was also listed as a domestic extremist by Netcu.
The joint committee on human rights requested the government “that notice should always be given of applications for injunctions under the [Protection from Harassment] Act which related to protest activities and that the ordinary presumption that such applications should be heard in private should be reversed in such cases”. The government refused but have been asked again. I hope they will reconsider.
Dr Peter Harbour
Abingdon, Oxfordshire
• I feel impelled to write with regard to the letter sent by Richard J Deboo (October 29) and your reports on “domestic extremism”. Countless people have been harassed, threatened and physically attacked by animal rights “protesters”. Indeed while living in Cambridge I saw scores of people entirely unrelated to the life-saving and important research that happens there subjected to intimidation, verbal abuse and, in one frightening period, invasions of student halls of residence and bomb threats. I have yet to hear of any climate change protesters resorting to such tactics. To group the peaceful demonstrations and nonviolent direct action of the climate camp protesters with the campaign of terror waged upon scientists and support staff is deeply offensive.
Jo Mulvaney
London
• Extract from an email received today from a friend: “Must see you some time – but don’t know when! Don’t think somehow I shall be at your march – my job requires me to keep out of the police lists! So, maybe when I finally retire?” Enough said?
Pam Laurance
London
• Perhaps it should be a badge (Letters, 29 October) saying: “Domestic extremists against the bomb” (readers of a certain age will recall “Special branch against the bomb” and “Well-meaning Guardian readers against the bomb”).
Pam Lunn
Kenilworth, Warwickshire

Jenni Russell (This inversion of power is teaching our children that aggression can pay, 27 October) is correct when she argues that teachers are in an “almost impossible position … as they try to keep order in schools”, but off the mark when she claims there is an “inversion of power”. Some of the most disruptive pupils I have encountered, as a teacher, are often the most powerless.
Teachers and pupils are victims of successive failures of government to address the inequalities that exist within our society. These are at best reflected in our education system, at worse exacerbated by them. Classrooms are not becoming unmanageable because of a policy of inclusion. The problem is this policy is at odds with the principles of choice and competition that both this government and the Conservatives do so little to challenge. Jenni Russell looks to blame the very pupils who are most powerless in this system.
Jason Todd
London
•  Although I am loth to suggest this, I think one of the answers to the problem of teachers being falsely accused by unruly pupils is to have CCTV cameras in the hallways and corridors of schools. Frequently these allegations are related to teachers trying to remove children from classrooms into corridors due to disruptive or aggressive behaviour. CCTV would confirm or deny these allegations and also reduce the bullying of pupils by other pupils, which often takes place in corridors. I am sure there would be few objections, as children are monitored by CCTV cameras everywhere else they go.
Josette Morgan
Potton, Bedfordshire

Independent:

The question is not whether trafficking exists, but how it is being used to raid and arrest sex workers (“Make no mistake: sex trafficking is real”, Comment, 29 October). Even the police do not dispute the findings reported as “Inquiry fails to find single trafficker who forced anybody into prostitution”.
We who insist that a distinction be made between trafficking (coercion and rape) and prostitution (consenting sexual services) are charged with siding with pimps and clients against women. How about that for “nasty personal tone”?
Yet no one is more concerned with women’s safety than we are. We campaign for decriminalisation so women don’t have to work alone (it is illegal for two or more women to work together) and can report violence without fear of arrest or persecution. After the Ipswich tragedy we formed the Safety First Coalition. Distinguished members such as the Royal College of Nursing and the anti-poverty Zacchaeus 2000 Trust agree prostitution must be decriminalised. But our voices are ignored in favour of Home Office-funded projects which claim the politicians know what’s best for us.
From India to South Africa and Argentina to the US, sex worker organisations are demanding decriminalisation. We do not glamorise prostitution; neither do we demonise it. Unwaged and low-waged work are the reality of most women worldwide, and prostitution is a job that enables millions to feed our children and pay the rent.
We say, “Criminalise poverty, not prostitutes”. Where are anti-prostitution feminists when immigration laws and welfare reform threaten single mothers with destitution, a sure way to increase prostitution? It is more convenient, and more fundable, to blame individual men.
Cari Mitchell
English Collective of Prostitutes,
London NW5
Nutt is right and Labour is wrong
The sacking of David Nutt is clearly wrong. The science is on his side. But there is a deeper political agenda here which exposes the populism of the Labour Party leadership.
In my opinion, cannabis is very unlikely to cause schizophrenia. After 35 years as a psychiatrist, I cannot recall seeing many cases of so-called cannabis-induced schizophrenia where there has not been a family history of schizophrenia.
Professor Robin Murray published one of several family studies showing that cannabis-induced psychosis is indeed associated with a positive family history of schizophrenia.
One draws the conclusion that schizophrenia, or the early effects of schizophrenia before it becomes clinically diagnosable, is causing the cannabis smoking rather than the other way round.
For some reason, Professor Murray ignores his own family study and those of other researchers which support the fact that schizophrenia and “cannabis psychosis” is indeed familial and genetic rather than caused by cannabis.
The deeper malaise is the need for the Labour Party leaders to portray themselves as the great protectors of the British people so they can win votes. These leaders have convinced themselves that by creating a moral panic about cannabis, ecstasy, crime, anti-social behaviour etc. they will be seen as our saviours.
The reality about cannabis is more complex, as David Nutt has so carefully explained. The same is true about crime and anti-social behaviour where the Labour Party pretends that parents are to blame, so they need punishment as much as their children. It is sad to see the Labour leaders behaving like this so wilfully. It is no surprise that people think they are time-expired as politicians. Only the Liberal Democrats have it right on cannabis.
Hugh Gurling
Professor of Molecular Psychiatry, European Editor PSYCHIATRIC GENETICS, University College London Medical School W1
In February, Professor David Nutt was asked to apologise for standing by the evidence his experts were asked to gather. He has now been sacked for saying LSD and Ecstasy are relatively less dangerous than alcohol.
The government’s statistics indicate there were 187,000 admissions with either a primary or secondary diagnosis specifically related to alcohol in 2005-06 (compared to 89,280 in 1995-96). The government’s own estimate suggests alcohol misuse costs the NHS up to£2.5bn per annum. Conversely, the drug (non-alcoholic) misuse statistics show hospital admissions with a primary diagnosis of a drug-related mental health and behavioural disorder have decreased, while admissions with a primary diagnosis of poisoning by drugs have increased.
The number of drug-related deaths shows no overall trend and it is estimated (2003-04) that NHS use due to drug misuse, by problem Class A drug users, costs £488m per year.
Excessive risk-aversion is emerging as a national trait, while our ability to assess comparative risk and produce a proportionate response seems to be diminishing. This aversion is exacerbated by the refusal of policy-makers to countenance evidence and provide leadership in formulating public policy based on best available scientific evidence.
Professor Nutt made a prescient point in his lecture that resulted in his sacking. After providing some measure of “drug harm ranking”, he stated that “without such reference points, the debate about relative drug harms becomes isolated and arbitrary, more akin to a ‘religious’ discussion”. At least on this specific point he has been proven right.
Dr Aamir Ahmed
London N12
So the government has sacked Professor David Nutt. Well, what a surprise. This is the same government that rejected recommendations that formal education should begin at the age of six, rejected UN advice not to return refugees to Iraq and Afghanistan and rejected advice from its expert advisers on the treatment of swine flu.
Clearly, we have government that knows it knows everything, and knows that the rest of us know nothing; but we shall not have this government for much longer.
Soon it will be replaced by another government, equally certain of its omnipotence. Some things in politics are certain.
Stanley Knill
London N15
The sacking of Professor David Nutt is a disgraceful act of political bullying. It is, of course, common for the views of experts to be ignored when they are at variance with government opinion, but too often recently the purveyors of such views have also been subject to unpleasant and personal attack.
If we are to have public policy based on fact and evidence, rather than ministerial ignorance and ideology, the political class must stop scapegoating experts and start listening to the requested advice.
It behoves all of us to stand up to this bullying and intimidation by asking the Prime Minister to rescind Professor Nutt’s sacking.
Dr Miles D Witham
West Drums, By Brechin, Angus
Bank bonuses are for spending
Bob Armstrong (letters, 28 October) claims that bonuses, and presumably other cases of extravagant “remuneration”, may be unfair but are appropriate because they make the economy move. I beg to differ. Money earned is always spent, one way or another. The differences are in how it is spent and by whom.
If, for example, the ostentatiously rich no longer had the money to spend on huge yachts, many other people would have it instead to spend on, say, many more sailing boats, as well as the necessities of life.
Were it not for the self-centred spending of the exorbitantly rich and the aspiring rich, more talent would go where it is really needed, for example into research in areas such as cancer and environmentally sustainable growth.
Dr Nicholas Deliyanakis
Brussels
Why is every one so against bankers being given exorbitant bonuses? Banks are not lending money, so this is the only way that money will be placed into circulation. The only condition on the payment of bonuses I would introduce is that they have to be spent within three months in the UK.
John Trapp
Cambridge
No Seychelles ‘deal’ with pirates
Your article “Is Seychelles turning a blind eye to pirates?” (28 October) is misleading. The Seychelles government rejects allegations that “the islands have also become popular with pirates”. Seychelles has 1.4m sq km of ocean as part of its Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), and 115 islands. The immediate Seychelles territorial waters are safe, and there have been no pirate attacks within this area. But the Seychelles’ EEZ has been threatened by piracy on numerous occasions; it covers a vast expanse of water.
The government has not made any “deals with the pirates which would allow them to operate as long as they do not affect the interests of the Seychelles”. The frequency of attacks have had a direct economic impact on the Seychelles economy, with a 30 per cent reduction in port activity. Piracy is a direct threat to the wellbeing and sovereignty of the Seychelles government, a committed partner in the fight against piracy in the region.
The release of 11 suspected pirates the article refers to was due to lack of evidence. Many nations have released suspected pirates at sea due to lack of evidence. In the Seychelles’ repatriation of 23 pirates in September, their release was also due to lack of evidence. They had to be deported by a special flight to Somalia (no scheduled flights exist). No “understanding” was reached with the pirates. Kenya and the Republic of Seychelles are the only countries to have tried to prosecute pirates.
Since February, President James Michel has been developing military co-operation with international partners to create a surveillance hub for international forces in Seychelles. The Republic has pursued anti-piracy operations in active co-operation with Nato, the EU, Russian, Chinese, and US naval forces in the region.
Jean-Paul Adam
Secretary of State, Mahé, Republic of Seychelles
What about their right to return?
Two American writers berate the Arab nations for their unwillingness to absorb Palestinian refugees into full citizenship (letters, 31 October). Many of these people in refugee camps are there because of the terror waged by Israelis in 1948.
It is typical of Israeli public relations to seek to turn attention to humanitarian problems in someone else’s country, when the refugee problems were caused by the savagery that attended the creation of Israel.
Are we to assume that the right of return for Palestinians is no longer to be considered?
Frank Campbell
Southampton
Remember Louis?
“Mr Chirac now becomes the first former head of state in French history to be put on trial” (Genevieve Roberts, 31 October). Why does she discount Louis XVI?
Ivor Samuels
London SW17
Not obvious at all
You say, “Blair is the obvious choice for president” (Steve Richards, 30 October). I would agree with him if I thought that George W Bush is the obvious choice for the next secretary-general of the United Nations, or that Slobodan Milosevic is the obvious choice to fill the next vacancy in the judiciary of the International Criminal Court.
Jim McCluskey
Twickenham, Middlesex
Singled out
Thinking about competition and equal rights, how about your paper being the first to offer a single holiday for someone? I enjoy travelling on my own but look in vain for any competition I could enter.
P Francis
Norwich, Norfolk
Count me out
Let me clear up one misunderstanding for Tim Bonner (letters, 31 October). My long-standing opposition to hunting and coursing is not, and never has been, “driven by class politics and prejudice”. I simply disapprove of human beings inflicting such gratuitous cruelty on wild animals.
Stephen Roberts
Sutton Coldfield, West Midlands
Play on Pope
A variation of the Thought of the Day by Alexander Pope (30 October) is, “Some people will never understand anything because they learn everything”. Learn here is in the sense to commit to memory.
Kartar Uppal
West Bromwich, West Midlands
Trust in the census
You say the value of the census is dependent on public support and trust (leading article, 26 October). The census process will be run by Lockheed Martin, the world’s largest arms firm. Those expected to provide increased family details on immigration and ethnicity are also the least likely to trust a US arms manufacturer.
Richard Drake
Bristol
Bottom line
The increasing reliance, by your cartoonist, Dave Brown, on excretory imagery is to be deplored.
Harumph!
Alun Williams
Llanfairpwllgwyngyll, Anglesey

Times

Sir, I was dismayed by the events leading up to David Nutt’s dismissal as chair of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs. It is very disturbing to find, towards the end of my lengthy career in drug abuse research, that the Government places so little value on scientific evidence. During the past 40 years I have seen many decisions by Governments with which I disagreed, but not a single one of them motivated me to denounce it in the media.
The Home Secretary expected that Professor Nutt would not contradict the views of the Government when presenting invited lectures at world-leading universities. And yet Professor Nutt is one of the leading international experts in the field. He has published several hundred peer-reviewed articles in the biomedical literature, is the editor of an international scientific journal, is a former president of the British Association for Psychopharmacology and will be the next president of the European College of Neuropsycho- pharmacology. After asking the ACMD to provide advice, the Government has ignored that advice and penalised Professor Nutt for expressing his expert opinion.
It is not surprising that another member of the ACMB has resigned. All scientists who work without pay to advise the Government must surely be considering their positions. After this unjustified dismissal, it will be hard to find a replacement with comparable expertise and stature. Anyone who takes on the role risks being branded by the scientific community as a collaborator with a Government that has no respect for expertise. I call upon Alan Johnston to reinstate Professor Nutt.
Ian Stolerman
Emeritus Professor of Behavioural Pharmacology, Institute of Psychiatry, King’s College London
Sir, Margaret Thatcher said “Advisers advise and Ministers decide” and having been both I fully agree. An adviser owes his minister his honest opinion, which might or might not be taken, for the minister will have other considerations to take into account. If the advice is ignored, and the adviser feels strongly enough, then resign and speak out. Until then you owe your minister your loyalty and your silence.
Lord Young of Graffham
London W1

Sir, The film director Jane Campion describes her “journey” with John Keats and the inspiration for her much-lauded film about the life, love and death from tuberculosis aged 25 of one of our greatest poets (“Bright star: how Keats opened a pathway into my soul and imagination,” Oct 30). And a new biography reveals delayed diagnosis may have contributed to Keats’s early death (“Blundering doctor ‘killed’ Keats,” Oct 26).
Nearly 200 years on and more people are dying of this harrowing disease than ever before — an astonishing 5,000 people every day. A failure to accurately diagnose TB is still one of the main contributing factors. Others are HIV, drug resistance and poverty. There is also a rise of cases in the UK.
We can cure TB — we know how to do it — but the current level of political will and funding is not sufficient. The UK Coalition to Stop TB, a cross-sector network of NGOs, media, private sector and academia, is working to bring attention to the modern-day epidemic. We are asking the UK Government to make TB a priority.
Keats’s was an untimely death. In the 21st century, men, women and children should not still be dying from this age-old killer.
Kate Finch
UK Coalition to Stop TB

Sir, We are pleased that the recent proposal to close polling stations has now been abandoned, as we believe all citizens in a democracy should be able to exercise their right to vote (“Threat to voting in cut-price poll plan,” Oct 30).
However, with 68 per cent of polling stations largely inaccessible to disabled people, the real issue is the urgent need to improve accessibility so that disabled people can take part in the democratic process.
In addition, the voting process has changed little since the 1800s and is increasingly looking out-of-date and out of touch with the modern world.
As well as improving access to polling stations, perhaps the time has come to widen voting options. Scope’s Polls Apart campaign is calling for multi-channel voting including e-voting options such as online and text voting.
This would help to improve access and convenience for everyone, including disabled people, and thereby encourage more people to vote. In a modern democracy people should be able to vote in the most accessible way possible.
Alice Maynard
Chair, Scope

Sir, The headline for your archive photograph of the V2 in Trafalgar Square: “London’s civilians see a weapon that terrorised them” (Oct 30 ) could be seen as a bit of an insult to Londoners.
I was a schoolboy in South London at the time, and for the whole of the war we were under the direct line of fire for various types of bombing raids. We had five V-bombs within 800 yards of our house, together with other intruders and the road peppered with incendiaries. I can’t remember anyone being terrified, although obviously worried at times. We all got on with it. I volunteered as an ARP messenger when I was 15, which was my introduction to death. School was more or less normal. We had shelters and afternoon working parties to clear the rugby pitches of shrapnel. Life went on.
Has something happened to British stoicism?
Ken Groves
Aldeburgh, Suffolk
Edinburgh

Sir, Your leading article (“Sweet William,” Oct 30) took me back to childhood days in Rotherham, with the fly-covered horse meat in butchers and sarsaparilla emporiums dispensing different flavours from wooden kegs, a beverage which would later be displaced by the frozen drink known as Jubbly at about the same time as the arrival of Wagon Wheels, which seemed so much larger then than now.
I take issue, though, with Roger Boyes’s assertion that “licorice was for losers” (Commentary, Oct 30). The Spanish wood, or root, that I used to gnaw on was looked on with envy, and certainly John Betjeman seemed to have gained more than he lost in The Licorice Fields at Pontefract.
Stephen J. Johnson
Mirfield, W Yorks

Telegraph:

SIR – The sacking of Professor David Nutt as chairman of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (report (October 31) is clearly wrong. The science is on his side.
However there is a deeper political agenda here which exposes the populism of the Labour Party leadership.

In my opinion cannabis is very unlikely to cause schizophrenia. After 35 years as a psychiatrist I cannot recall many cases of so called cannabis-induced schizophrenia where there has not been a family history of schizophrenia.
Professor Robin Murray published one of several family studies that show that cannabis induced psychosis is indeed associated with a positive family history of schizophrenia.
One draws the conclusion that schizophrenia, or its early effects before it becomes clinically diagnosable, is causing the cannabis smoking rather than the other way round. (For some reason Professor Murray ignores his own study and others that support the fact that “cannabis psychosis” is indeed familial.)
The deeper malaise is the need for the Labour Party leadership to portray themselves as the great protectors of the British people, so that they can win votes. The party leadership have convinced themselves that, by creating a moral panic about cannabis, ecstasy and crime, they will be seen as our saviours.
The reality about cannabis is more complex as Professor Nutt has so carefully explained. The same is true about crime and antisocial behaviour, where Labour pretends parents are to blame, and need punishment as much as their children.
It is sad to see the Labour leaders behaving like this so wilfully. It is no surprise that people think they are time-expired as politicians. Only the Liberal Democrats have it right on cannabis.
Hugh Gurling
Professor of Molecular Psychiatry
University College Medical School
London W1
SIR – The dismissal of Professor Nutt confirms the intellectual bankruptcy of the Government and compromises the freedom of academic advisers to report their opinions without fear of retribution.
Rejection of expert advice in favour of a mind-numbingly simplistic approach to nuanced problems such as drug-taking, always maintaining that it is the “right” thing to do, is no way to shape policy.
Dr Nicholas Fawcett
Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford
SIR – If we had the political will, a three-point plan would smash drugs misuse.
1 End classification of drugs altogether. Drugs are either dangerous or they or not.
2 End the distinction between personal use and dealing. Possession is possession.
3 Impose the severest penalties for possession. I would favour the death penalty, with the hope that the odd MP caught early would reinforce the message.
Andrew Dyke
London N21
Who’ll save Royal Mail?
SIR – Why is it that the nationalistic fervour that prevents us from relinquishing our pound sterling and pound weight does not stop us from destroying our Royal Mail?
Matt Minshall
King’s Lynn, Norfolk
SIR – I would like to thank the Communication Workers Union for its current action.
Relying on post for my small business to send and receive cheques, I have been forced by the strikes to re-evaluate methods of payment, and have finalised arrangements for payments and receipts to be made electronically from now on.
Royal Mail will therefore get little or no business from me in future. As a by-product I have calculated that my bank charges will be some two-thirds less this next financial year.
Tim Twist
Matlock, Derbyshire
SIR – Is it not mad that both sides measure the success of the postal strike by the size of the heap of undelivered mail? Each item belongs to a customer upon whom their wages depend. This guarantees we are all looking for reliable alternatives, and the demise of the Royal Mail will become a self fulfilling prophecy.
Chris Green
Prestwood, Buckinghamshire
No leaves on my poppy
SIR – I always remove the leaf from my poppy. I believe it detracts from the stark simplicity of the annual reminder of the blood shed by millions round the world.
Robert Warner
Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire
SIR – The Royal British Legion’s Robert Lee (Letters, October 31) says that “the stick-on poppy has nothing to do with health and safety gone mad”.
My husband and I bought poppies from a British Legion seller. He thanked us but did not offer pins to attach them to our coats. When we queried this he gave us pins but said he had been instructed to provide these only when asked. I thought he was joking but he said not. It was because of health and safety regulations.
Ann Fordham
Barnehurst, Kent
Late start to the week
SIR – Why is it so difficult to obtain a calendar or diary that shows Sunday as the first day of the week?
Mike Parry
Llanymynech, Powys
Going off Guy Fawkes
SIR – The dismal picture of Hallowe’en painted by Christopher Howse (News review, October 31) cannot go unchallenged. Yes, it’s a new American phenomenon, but the pleasure it affords is enormous. It gives an opportunity to dress up, to frighten and be frightened (every child’s delight), and for interaction between children and adults, who reward them with chocolate for their often amazing efforts.
Contrast this with dangers round the bonfire and surly demands for a penny from local youths. I know which I prefer.
J.D. Mortimer
Great Harwood, Lancashire
SIR – Is the rise in the popularity of Hallowe’en over Guy Fawkes’ Night because the destruction of Parliament no longer seems quite so outrageous?
Jen Grimes
Brentwood, Essex
High street robbery
SIR – Gordon Brown proudly proclaimed that, due to his massive rescue package, no one had been damaged by the failures in the banking system. At that time I kept silent, even though I had seen a massive fall in the value of the shares I held in Lloyds.
Of course it was the same Gordon Brown who had railroaded the rather weak chairman of Lloyds to take over an ailing HBOS. He did this by offering Lloyds a short cut past competition rules. This reduced a once prudent and respected high-street bank to a basket case.
And now, for political expediency, he is going to create new banks by selling off the good parts of these institutions. He would appear to be showing little consideration to the many people who hold shares in Lloyds and other banks.
Michael Jeffery
Trebetherick, Cornwall
SIR – I like the idea of these new banks that take deposits and issue mortgages only to safe customers.
Perhaps we should call them “building societies”.
Colin Ryall
West Clandon, Surrey
Forty-eight o’clock
SIR – Letters about clock chimes (October 29) reminded me of an experience while walking in the French Pyrenees.
In France, church clocks strike the hour twice, with an interval of about half a minute. The villages of Borce and Etsaut are less than a mile apart, on opposite sides of a valley. Each church clock is audible from the other village. One was slower than the other, and at midnight I was able to hear 48 chimes.
Michael Hobby
Henllan, Denbighshire
The turbulent teapot
SIR – The problem of the dripping teapot (Letters, October 31) is simple to solve. If the spout is so shaped that the upper part protrudes over the lower lip no dripping will occur. It is counter-intuitive, but the friction between the fluid and the spout causes a pattern of turbulence which leads to a clean pour.
Sadly people prefer to rely on their commonsense belief that shaping the spout so that the lower lip protrudes must be right. It isn’t.
Hugh Hyde
Ludlow, Shropshire
Giving up meat is no solution to climate change
SIR – Giving up meat (report, October 27) is not the solution to climate change. It would make only a marginal difference to greenhouse-gas emissions.
About 60 per cent of British farmland and large tracts of land worldwide are best suited to growing grass. If we did away with all livestock we could not utilise this land for efficient food production.
The challenge is to produce meat more sustainably – which is already happening in countries such as Britain. Meat production has an important role in feeding the world in the decades ahead.
Professor Ian Crute
Chief Scientist, Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board
Stoneleigh Park, Warwickshire

Irish Times:

How fair is the ‘fair deal’ scheme?
Madam, – On reading reports of the new “fair deal” nursing home scheme (Home News, October 30th), one had to wonder what inspired the Minister to give it that title. It is clear given the comments from the Irish Senior Citizens’ Parliament that the scheme is very far from “fair”. Clearly the scheme as proposed will result in very different levels of care for the elderly. Those with money will receive the full range of care, while those who don’t will receive a good deal less.
The title “fair deal” will be forever associated with the efforts of President Truman, followed by Kennedy and Johnson, to introduce a modicum of social care into the American way of life. A call for universal health care was central and led eventually to the introduction of Medicare and other reforms designed to bring fairness and justice to a society that had simply stepped over those that had difficulty keeping up. And now as President Obama sets out to tackle the two-tier health system that is causing such pain and misery, the “fair deal” seems about to reach the final destination charted for it by Truman.
But our “fair deal” will mean the opposite; it seems we are destined to pass the US on the way down as they at last seek to rise above the vulgarity of the “everyman for himself” ideology that seems to inform all aspects of our own Government’s policy-making. Is our “fair deal” scheme so named to hide its true intentions, to extend the two-tier health system to the grave? In all of this it seems we can be sure of one thing: in the current Minister for Health, we have one of the finest spin doctors about. – Yours, etc,
JIM O’SULLIVAN,
Rathedmond, Sligo.
Challenging ‘bus gate’
Madam, – I was disappointed to learn of the High Court challenge by 12 Dublin businesses to the “bus gate” at College Green (Home News, October 27th). I think this is short-sighted retrograde step that seeks to hold this city and her people back.
It is clear that journey times by bus have shortened enormously, that there is a significant increase in cyclists and that all this has led to a less congested capital. In 1979 Grafton Street was pedestrianised amid protests that proved to be ill-founded, and 30 years later “bus gate” faces similar problems.
Dublin City Council took the brave step and it is my hope that it will hold the line. Should Brown Thomas et al win, it will be a case of one step forward and 12 steps back. – Yours, etc,
JODY MADIGAN,
Terenure Road,
East Rathgar,
Dublin 6.
Unions’ day of action
Madam,  – With the news of “Unions’ day of action to hit hospitals and schools” (Home News, October 29th), it would appear we are set for a winter of discontent in the public service.
The crux of the problem is that the Government must cut costs, but public servants say they cannot afford to take a pay cut. It appears there is no way to square this circle. But, what is driving public servants’ need for these levels of pay? The problem relates to the property boom: many public servants have massive mortgages to pay each month. The solution relates to Nama.
The Government could cut public service pay by say 5 per cent, and at the same time, using the Nama legislation, force the banks to write off 5 per cent of all mortgages, (and fix current interest rates relative to European Central Bank for a number of months), on primary residences. By doing this the argument against a public service pay cut would reduce significantly.
While this move would in the short run not be popular with bankers, even with the 5 per cent cut in the value of the mortgages they would still return a profit in the long run. In addition, such action should stimulate the property market by reducing negative equity. The private sector would benefit too from an effective devaluation of a major wage driver in the economy.
It’s national asset management and national interest management. –   Yours, etc,
PAUL GALLAGHER,
Beaumont Road,
Beaumont, Dublin 9.
Madam, – It is clear that the trade union leaders in this country are determined to have their national day of action, if only to be seen to do something that may justify their six-figure salaries. I say let them strike, let them “bring the country to a standstill” (they perversely seem to consider that this would be a worthy achievement), and then the next day when we all return to work, we can review the impact of the unions’ contribution to the national crisis. A few more small firms pushed into bankruptcy? A hundred more people on the dole? Even less tax revenue available to the Government to service our mountain of debt and maintain services? With friends like these, who needs enemies? Yours, etc,
GAVIN ROSS,
Eaton Square,
Monkstown, Co Dublin.
Palestinian access to water
Madam, – The Israeli ambassador’s claim in his letter of October 29th that his country abides by the Oslo agreement is untrue – Israel has never respected any of the agreements signed with the Palestinians. The Oslo agreement called for the establishment of a Palestinian state by May 1999.
Benjamin Netanyahu, the current Israeli prime minister, in his book A Place Among the Nationspublished in 1993, stated that the Oslo agreement aims at the destruction of the state of Israel and decided to do everything possible to destroy this agreement rather than respect it or any part of it.
In his letter criticising Amnesty International’s report Troubled Waters, the ambassador mentioned his country’s generosity of supplying the Palestinians with desalinated water. This is not merely untrue, but is also a sign of the apartheid nature of his country, in order to keep the fresh water for his fellow Jewish settlers. Because he also failed to tell the world that this fresh water in question comes from the Palestinian aquifers in the West Bank.
Thanks to Amnesty International and to your newspaper for bringing up this basic human rights issue – the water – to your respected readers. Regardless of what the Israelis say, the truth of matter was told by the Palestinian woman quoted in your Editorial (October 28th), who, commenting on such Israeli inhumane practices, said: “They make our life very difficult to make us leave”.
Ambassador HIKMAT AJJURI,
General Delegation of
Palestine, Dublin.
Zebra mussel infestation
Madam, – Sadly we have come to the end of an era in our household. The water pump that draws our domestic water from Annaghkeen Bay in Lough Corrib has succumbed to the dreaded zebra mussel. The foot valve is infested with mussels; they have colonised the pipes and infiltrated the pressure pump.
I can remember the coming of the rural electrification scheme to this townland in the mid-1950s and the excitement of having running water for the first time. On the subject of electrification, Seán Lemass announced to the Senate in 1945: “I hope to see the day that when a girl gets a proposal from a farmer she will inquire not so much about the number of cows but rather concerning the electrical appliances she will require before she gives her consent including not merely electric light but a water heater, an electric clothes boiler, a vacuum cleaner and even a refrigerator.”
In March 2006, I attended a conference in a Claregalway entitled Zebra Mussels and other Alien Invaders. Dr Doug Jensen of the University of Minnesota spoke about the initiatives that were adopted in the US to combat the scourge of these mussels. The Irish Government might have acted to ban boat movement from infected waters (eg Shannon-Erne Waterway) to the Western Lakes (unless the boats were certified as steam-cleaned and out-of-water for a specified period). Instead, notices about zebra mussels were erected at slipways and launching areas. What a joke! The mayfly season came and so did the anglers – in their hundreds. At the slipway at Annaghkeen there were cars with registrations from counties Clare, Longford, Roscommon, Cavan, Limerick, Leitrim – all launching boats and engines into the Corrib. And exactly the same occurred in 2007, 2008 and 2009.
It is not my intention to diminish the Trojan work done by the various local agencies and fishing clubs, but there is a segment of the angling fraternity that display total disregard of the dangers presented to Lough Corrib from the zebra mussels. These mussels can be transported on ropes, on landing nets, on the boots of fishermen, and even by people walking along the shore. It is much more advisable to hire boats locally.
When anglers personally experience the impact of the mussels on their wallets, will they begin to take stock? The discovery that the lower unit of their outboard engine is encrusted with zebra mussels will make them annoyed. But when the fellow who services their engine tells them the water intakes, and inside the housing as far as the pump impeller is similarly encrusted, they are going to be rather unhappy.
Zebra mussels have already caused problems to water treatment facilities on the River Shannon. Pipes have been obstructed, water for human consumption tainted by the mussels, and the waste left in their wake. Public and group water schemes operating on the Corrib may be similarly affected within a very short period. Sixty years is a short lifetime to see the water come bubbling and sparkling out of brand new tap, and then to be an eye witness to the irreversible changes of a lake’s ecology. We really have come to the end of an era. Ní gá ach sracfhéachaint a thógáil chun an fhírinne a fhéiceail.
ZARA BRADY,
Rinnaknock,
Headford, Co Galway.
Protestant schools’ funding
Madam, – Ian French (October 29th) lists the types of school available to Catholic children and those schools available to Protestants. He omits to say that all children in the Republic are entitled to free secondary education in the State schools, ie, those managed by the VECs.
These schools provide free education, are non-denominational and follow the same syllabus as the “free voluntary” and “fee-paying” schools, and are found in most towns. – Yours, etc,
HELEN WILSON,
Durrow,
Tullamore,
Co Offaly.
Current affairs as fairy tale
Madam, – Sarah Carey is entitled to her view of RTÉ’s The Frontline(Opinion, October 28th). It’s certainly an original one judging by other media comment and, more importantly, the reaction of our viewers. Certainly the programme includes a lot of passionate contributions from the audience – which is a good thing, not a bad thing – but it also features substantial argument about important national issues.
For instance, the McCarthy report and public sector pay featured on September 28th. People argued their positions passionately but were listened to with real concern and given the opportunity to engage in serious discussion on the issues they raised.
The following week (October 5th) the main item was a considered debate on whether the Greens should stay in Government and that was followed (October 12th) by a comprehensive discussion of the issues surrounding Crumlin Children’s Hospital.
Ms Carey’s characterisation of the panellists on the programme as “the bad guys placed in stocks” is simply untrue. She cites – very simplistically – two examples, but makes no mention of the other nine items The Frontlinehas to date featured, which even the most unreasonable critic could not characterise in that way. – Yours, etc,
DAVID NALLY,
Editor, The Frontline,
RTÉ,
Donnybrook, Dublin 4.
Getting feet off the seats
Madam, – I am a frequent user of the Dart (Dublin Area Rapid Transit) rail service, and I am astonished that so many people ignore the clearly displayed signs: “Feet are not for seats”.
Not only is this practice unhygienic for obvious reasons, but many of the practitioners of this uncivilised behaviour are well-dressed individuals, who give the outward, but illusory appearance of sophistication.
In all of my travels throughout the world, never have I witnessed such ignorance and lack of respect for public property and for fellow travellers. – Yours, etc,
JOE McBRIDE,
Stradbrook Grove,
Blackrock,
Co Dublin.
Behind the frontline
Madam, – Liam Doran stops short of an obvious solution to his special pleading for frontline public servants (Opinion, October 30th). Surely our public service midfielders would happily accept two swigs of fiscal medicine to insulate their frontline cousins from the unconscionable truth? – Yours, etc,
JOHN HILL,
University of Hertfordshire
Business School,
De Havilland Campus,
Herts, England.
Finest foot forward
Madam, – What a jolly photograph on the Front page (October 30th). It is enough to put a smile on everyone’s face despite the dreary winter day.
It appears we will be in good and safe hands with the latest batch of female graduates from the Garda college in Templemore. – Yours, etc,
ANN LEE-DOYLE,
Ticknock,
Arklow, Co Wicklow.
On the right track
Madam, – At the recent banquet to celebrate Kilkenny’s 400 year charter as a city and the Savour Kilkenny Food Festival held in the castle, the mayor’s guest of honour was the Norwegian ambassador and his wife who arrived in the city by train. It’s a pity our public figures would not follow their example. – Yours, etc,
RHODA NOLAN,
Secretary,
Savour Kilkenny,
Castlecomer Road,
Kilkenny.
Letters Policy
The Irish Times receives a great many letters each day and it is possible to find space for only a small selection. Therefore, when writing, please be as concise as possible. It is our policy to represent as wide a range of views as possible within the constraints of libel and taste. However, we do require writers to put their names to their opinions. Therefore, we do not publish letters using pseudonyms or other formulae to conceal the writer’s identity, such as “name and address with editor”.

Well I must be off

best wishes John

Sheer poetry

November 1, 2009 by johnblakey

Sheer poetry 1 November 2009

Off out to pick up some books on Freecycle, Lucy is giving away her books, she has neatly labeled each bag and ours is labeled poetry. So with trembling anticipation we set off, I have found that you always get more than what you expect with Freeccycle. She lives not too far away and for once we avoid the traditional getting lost on the way to a new address, even the house number is plainly visible. A slightly unkempt garden but one that was neat once, a tall beautiful blonde lady, radiating intelligence. She with just a ever so slight reluctance hands me a box full of poetry books and inquires if I want anything more. Some biographies perhaps? So am given a a bag of biographies, seven Laurence Van der Post!
The box of poetry is a heavenly delight, some Chinese, Indian and Cumbrian poets, Lear, Dylan and Keats and Yates. Not modern stuff. There is always a tinge of sadness when picking up books from Freecycle. You can’t help wondering why they are giving all these riches away?
I read Twenty poems from Rudyard Kipling, 1/- net my Methuen & co London, The little book is very old and frail, a service edition I suspect, its just the right size to fit into a soldiers breast pocket. It is dated 1918. It has If, of course. http://www.kipling.org.uk/poems_if.htm
And Gunga Din which I have not read for years
http://www.love-poems.me.uk/kipling_gunga_din_w_insp.htm But I am most intrigued by one I have never read before: The Secret of the Machines

 
Modern Machinery
We were taken from the ore-bed and the mine,
We were melted in the furnace and the pit–
We were cast and wrought and hammered to design,
We were cut and filed and tooled and gauged to fit.
Some water, coal, and oil is all we ask,
And a thousandth of an inch to give us play:
And now, if you will set us to our task,
We will serve you four and twenty hours a day!

We can pull and haul and push and lift and drive,
We can print and plough and weave and heat and light,
We can run and race and swim and fly and dive,
We can see and hear and count and read and write!

Would you call a friend from half across the world?
If you’ll let us have his name and town and state,
You shall see and hear your cracking question hurled
Across the arch of heaven while you wait.
Has he answered? Does he need you at his side-
You can start this very evening if you choose
And take the Western Ocean in the stride
O seventy thousand horses and some screws!

The boat-express is waiting your command!
You will find the Mauritania at the quay,
Till her captain turns the lever ‘neath his hand,
And the monstrouos nine-decked city goes to sea.

Do you wish to make the mountains bare their head
And lay their new-cut forests at your feet?
Do you want to turn a river in its bed,
Or plant a barren wilderness with wheat?
Shall we pipe aloft and bring you water down
From the never-failing cisterns of the snows,
To work the mills and tramways in your town,
And irrigate your orchards as it flows?

It is easy! Give us dynamite and drills!
Watch the iron-shouldered rocks lie down and quake,
As the thirsty desert-level floods and fills,
And the valley we have dammed becomes a lake.

But remember, please, the Law by which we live,
We are not built to comprehend a lie,
We can neither love nor pity nor forgive.
If you make a slip in handling us you die!
We are greater than the Peoples or the Kings-
Be humble, as you crawl beneath our rods!–
Our touch can alter all created things,
We are everything on earth–except The Gods!

Though our smoke may hide the Heavens from your eyes,
It will vanish and the stars will shine again,
Because, for all our power and weight and size,
We are nothing more than children of your brain!

Rudyard Kipling

Seem to me all the more true today than when it was written

Postcards

Costa Blanca, (cala Mal Pas) Benidorm, Spain
http://www.flickr.com/photos/emperordalek/4060479010/

Isle if Wight villages
http://www.flickr.com/photos/emperordalek/4060481176/

Highcliffe, Isle of Wight, England
http://www.flickr.com/photos/emperordalek/4060482034/

Godshill, Isle of Wight, England
http://www.flickr.com/photos/emperordalek/4060482844/

Devon thatched cottages, England
http://www.flickr.com/photos/emperordalek/4059739889/

Obituary: Helmbrecht Hoppe: circus artiste

It is 30 years or more since the last unrideable mule act was seen in a British circus and today’s “health and safety” lobby would doubtless blanch at the thought of such a turn involving the public being allowed. Insurance company considerations would also probably prevent the act being staged at all. Helmbrecht Hoppe was a German-born circus artiste who forged a remarkable career exploiting this particular routine, which was widely publicised as “the Greatest Laugh in Showbusiness”.
The act involved inviting intrepid volunteers from the audience to try to ride his wild mules; invariably these riders were unseated very quickly, much to the delight of the rest of the audience. But the biggest laughs of the evening came when Hoppe himself, posing as a member of the audience, entered the circus ring to “have a go”, the results always being organised mayhem and the biggest belly laugh in the circus performance. An integral part of the act was Hoppe’s attractive wife, Karin, whose near-hysterical attempts to dissuade her husband from being so foolhardy were a delight. Ramon Prieto and Lou Lenny had been the pre-eminent exponents of this type of act before the Second World War, and thereafter it was Karl Kossmayer and Helmbrecht Hoppe who led the field in Europe. Hoppe’s act was fêted throughout Britain in all the leading circuses, and he later followed Kossmayer into the greater arena of ice spectaculars, with worldwide appearances in the famous Holiday on Ice shows.
Hoppe was born in 1931 in Helmbrechts, a small town near Hof, and was accordingly given the Christian name of Helmbrecht. He came from a well-known German circus family: his father, Oskar, was a preeminent circus director who successfully ran the Circus Busch-Berlin and later the Circus Willy Hagenbeck, which was continued after his death by his fifth wife, Ingrid. Hoppe’s mother, Augusta, was his father’s third wife. His brother Jean, known affectionately to German circus fans as “Schweiner Hoppe”, became famous in the Circus Sarrasani in Germany for his acts with chimpanzees, dogs and doves and a comedy act with pigs. Another brother, Ozzy, worked at Circus Busch with an elephant and pony act. Hoppe featured at his father’s Circus Busch-Berlin in 1960 with his emerging mule act, as did Karin with a riding act, but thereafter he forged his own independent career.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article6889505.ece

Letters:

Guardian:

The presidency of Europe will be highly symbolic and Tony Blair is a wholly inappropriate person to hold the role (“Is Tony Blair the right man to be president of Europe?”, Observer Debate, Comment). He misled our country – to secure support for a decision he had already made to join George Bush in the Iraq war. In doing so, he showed total disrespect for international law, the United Nations and the views of his European partners; he destabilised the world and was naively cavalier as to the cost in human lives.
Domestically, he was disrespectful of the rule of law and civil liberties, hollowed out the Labour party and deepened the divide between rich and poor. He cravenly bowed to the demands of Rupert Murdoch, the neoconservatives in America, the extreme pro-Israeli lobby and his friends in the City. He showed poor judgment in his choice of associates. His freeloading was shameful. Indeed, his lifestyle epitomises the worst values of a materialistic age. He does not have the qualities of a leader, but would be an excellent television presenter.
Helena Kennedy
London WC1
■ I get the impression that Henry Porter doesn’t like Tony Blair. That is about all I did get from his article about whether Blair should be president of Europe. We all know that Europe doesn’t work very well at the moment and is remote from its citizens. A good communicator like Tony Blair is the person it needs to sort things out.
David Taylor-Gooby
Peterlee, County Durham
■ Will Hutton misses the point that Blair has flouted the law and the rule of law (in halting the investigation into the Saudi Arabia bribery case, as well as the illegal Iraq war), has constantly supported US interests against European interests, is suspected of complicity in torture and has done nothing to promote peace in the Middle East.
Michael Ellman
London N19
■ Colleen Graffy’s support for Tony Blair is hardly surprising. Three years ago, in her capacity as US deputy assistant secretary of state for public diplomacy, Colleen Graffy, writing in the Guardian, wrote glowingly of the “first-class dentistry and colon cancer screening for the over-50s” and of the marvellous library available to detainees in Guantánamo. She finished her piece by asking readers to “look past the spin to the facts”. Given that both she and Blair seem unable even now to face the facts surrounding both the invasion of Iraq and Guantánamo, it might be better if both walked off into that great unknown reserved for yesterday’s people.
Mary Rodger
Oxford
■ Your editorial suggesting that Tony Blair is an unsuitable choice for the post of president seems to be based on your opposition to the invasion of Iraq (“Europe needs a president we can all trust. Blair is not the man for the job”, Editorial ). Your assertion that Mr Blair supported an “ultimately disastrous war” remains a matter of contention. Some may consider the removal of Saddam Hussein and the election of a democratic government less than disastrous.
Brian Wilson
Carlisle, Cumbria
■ Prating, holier-than-thou, propagandising, fluff-brained war criminal he may be, but anyone who has got so comprehensively up the nose of Boris Johson and William Hague must be a good thing. Go for it, President Tone!
Helen Rees
Southampton

Question Time audience was much too young
So Gavin Allen, executive editor of Question Time, believes the Question Time audience was “made up of a broad cross-section of backgrounds” (“The programme was not rigged – our audience sets the agenda of the show”, News Comment). I beg to differ. Given over half the population of London and the UK is over 40, I saw barely anyone in the audience older than the usual “advertisers’ dream demographic” of 18- to 35-year-olds. It was a totally unrepresentative audience and the poorer for it. There was no one who’d fought in the second world war or lived through the 50s Notting Hill riots or Enoch Powell and Ugandan-Asian “immigration panics”.
Dave Massey
London SE24
■ The use made of genetics and archaeology by the BNP on the subject of British ancestry are indeed risible, but if Andrew Rawnsley (Comment) is going to try to counter them, he should get his facts right.
Nick Griffin claimed on Question Time that the “indigenous British” had been “here overwhelmingly for the last 17,000 years”, to which Rawnsley responded that at that time “these islands were inhabited by Cro-Magnon man living in caves”. Actually, neither is right. There were no islands here 17,000 years ago – just a European promontory. Furthermore, it was largely covered by ice – an uninhabited polar wasteland.
We expect the BNP to get it wrong, but surely their critics need to be a bit more careful.
Professor Martin B Richards
Faculty of Biological Sciences
University of Leeds
We must focus on HIV prevention
While interviewed for the article “Call to cut cash for HIV in Africa” (World), I raised a range of other important points with your reporter. For example, I described how in some 10 countries (mostly in southern Africa) Aids continues to be an unprecedented tragedy demanding our fullest attention. I also emphasised that dramatic progress has been achieved towards making HIV treatment more accessible in Africa. What is now urgently needed is determining how best to extend this success to the crucial matter of HIV prevention, and to addressing other pressing health and social-economic problems in developing countries.
Daniel Halperin, lecturer on global health
Harvard University School of Public Health
Boston, US
No smoke without chocolate
Your article on obesity (“Obesity epidemic: who’s to blame?”, special report) didn’t mention that its rise over the last 30 years coincides with the decline in smoking. Tobacco has long been recognised as an appetite suppressant: in the old days, when someone felt under pressure or a bit peckish they reached for a fag. Now they reach for a chocolate bar. What did you expect?
Jeff Fendall
Broadstairs, Kent
A broad church? I think not
Diarmaid MacCulloch’s excellent piece (“Pope Benedict opens new front in battle for the soul of two churches”, Focus) omitted to mention the legal context of the debate. Why are the Anglican and Roman Catholic churches allowed to opt out of equalities opportunities legislation for clerical appointments in this country and in Europe generally? Both churches pray for a more equal world yet discriminate against women and gays in their own structures.
June Purvis
Portsmouth
Teacher’s Kafkaesque treatment
While I was a parent governor in my local secondary school, I was involved in a case where a pupil made a false allegation against a male teacher (“Teachers fight back against false claims of pupil assault”, News). As a result, the teacher was hounded from the state education system.
The allegation was made during sessions for girls with low self esteem, held in the school by the social services. One girl made an allegation of grossly inappropriate conduct. The teacher was suspended for three months, without having the allegation explained to him. The allegation was disproved but this Kafkaesque treatment convinced him never to return.
As a governor, I took part in the investigation. Afterwards, I attempted for over a year to determine who was responsible for this denial of the teacher’s basic rights. I met a brick wall, with a culture of multi-disciplinary meetings (which were always confidential) enabling each department involved to avoid accountability. The injustice stands; there is no reason it would not happen again.
David Cooper
Newbury, Berkshire
The trouble with trickle-down
It was interesting to see an economic journalist referring to “trickle-down” again, even if in less than glowing terms (Ruth Sunderland, Business).
Margaret Thatcher came to office in 1979, Ronald Reagan in 1981, both promoting this already long-discredited dictum. John Maynard Keynes on the other hand once famously remarked: “In the long run we will all be dead.” Just how many years have to pass before it becomes acknowledged that “trickle-down” economics doesn’t work?
Some years ago, William Keegan recommended an approach where, instead, finance was diverted to pensioners and the less well off, who it was reasonably assumed would spend it in on their needs in the local economy. He called this “trickle-up”. I wonder why the bankers have never considered it?
David Cook
Newcastle upon Tyne
Union is obstacle to prison reform
It’s a bit rich for Stewart McLaughlin of the Prison Officers Association to scream “Don’t blame prison officers” (Letters) when his organisation remains the main obstacle that any prison reform has had to surmount.
The POA constantly claims to be downtrodden and hard done by, but this is the union that in August 2007 flipped the prison system into self-destruct by walking out on an illegal national strike in an effort to secure more pay. Last year the POA ripped up the Joint Industrial Relations Procedural Agreement it had with the government, so ending its ability to talk sensibly with its employer and causing the government to bring in a statutory ban on future strike action. As for Wandsworth prison, can I remind Mr McLaughlin that the prison’s Independent Monitoring Board in its latest report said that there was a £1m-a-year trade in illegal drugs in the prison, much of which it claimed was due to corrupt staff.
Mark Leech, editor The Prisons Handbook
Manchester
What’s fame got to do with it?
Like Euan Ferguson (Opinion), some years ago I developed an aversion to “celebrity” titles – specifically the ubiquitous “celebrity chefs”, so took to signing my emails “John Rathbone, celebrity stock controller”.
John Rathbone

Independent:

Peter Stanford says that for 470 years the Church of England has “… been walking a careful middle line, halfway between Roman Catholicism and Protestantism…” (“Has the Pope outfoxed the Archbishop”, 25 October). The position on the Protestant-Catholic continuum varied in accordance with the views of the reigning monarch. So, Henry VIII was more “Catholic” than his son Edward, who was more “Protestant” than Elizabeth I. The debate about the nature of the Church of England became a feature of the English Civil War, not as a result of the need to tread a middle line, but because of the growth of the Protestant Puritan faction. The Church of England’s Anglo-Catholics may want to trace their line back 470 years, but it is doubtful that it can be traced further than the 19th century, to Newman and the Oxford Movement.
Roger Bannister
Kirkdale, Liverpool
I travel around many parishes and churches in my role as a professional organist, and there is simply no appetite for the Pope’s welcome to Anglo-Catholics. Broadly speaking, the evangelicals are anti-gay and anti-women and the handful of remaining Anglo-Catholics don’t care overmuch about gender/sexuality as long as they get their nice rituals. This is a bid by the Pope to sweep up a few cross High Anglicans in America and London, but most of all it is a bid to establish a tradition of married clergy within Catholicism, without which it will collapse in 25 years – perhaps less.
the halfwelshman
posted online
While Nick Griffin was appearing on Question Time, I was returning from a day trip to the Holocaust-related sites of Oswiecim, Auschwitz I and Birkenau. Though an emotional and harrowing day, it has inspired me as a 17-year-old A-level history student to speak out against hatred and racism. I believe the BBC was right to broadcast the programme: it has made the public aware of how disgusting Nick Griffin and his opinions are and shown the distance between the BNP and the Nazis to be frighteningly small.
Madeleine Stottor
Worcester Park, Surrey
How could anyone think of Tony Blair as a candidate for EU President? It’s time he disappeared from public life, to spend the rest of his days repenting his folly. “One may smile, and smile, and be a villain.”
Professor Robert Turner
Leipzig, Germany
Forestry across the UK is a very small part of the economy, and selling small conifer trees for fuel generates half the income of selling the same volume for sawing into planks for construction etc (“Who says it’s green to burn woodchips?”, 25 October). The process of thinning not only improves the value of the growing wood, but it also improves the habitat and ecology of the forest by letting light into the forest floor. It is going to be a number of years before sourcing wood gets difficult. We use local wood, and are aware that certification of the chain of custody will become a higher priority for us and for our customers.
Will Frost
Forest Fuels
posted online
The idea of shipping in other people’s trashed forest to torch it so that we can continue our unsustainable lifestyles is appalling. Wood plantations grown densely for fuel and harvested young are just an example of monocropping. Pesticides are also employed, and biotech firms are already trialling GM trees. There is nothing green about this at all.
bevfor
posted online
As a lecturer and parent of two children at university, I am appalled that the “Government is expected to raise the cap on annual tuition fees from £3,225 to as much as £7,000 a year” (“Colleges told: raise standards if you want more cash, 25 October”). There were many more applicants chasing too few places this year, because the Government limited the numbers universities could accept. It should lift the cap, not raise the cost.
James Derounian
University of Gloucestershire
Cheltenham
Why hasn’t all the Danish talent and intelligence left a country which taxes them at above 50 per cent (“Obama envoy warns of ‘no deal’ summit”, 18 October)? Maybe it is because Danes enjoy living in a well-run country with a government that aims to ensure a healthy – in the fullest sense – lifestyle for all. Why do we only hear about and follow the disastrous American model?
George Appleby
via email
“First Blair’s babes, now it’s Dave’s dolls”, you report (Joan Smith, 25 October). Can anyone tell me why women should get special treatment, but not the black community or those over 60?
Connor Ferris
via email

Times:

I NORMALLY have little hesitation in supporting the Labour party, and while I was not impressed by Nick Griffin’s appearance on Question Time, Jack Straw’s performance has made me re-consider how I see not only Labour but the three mainstream parties (News, Focus, Comment, Editorial, last week). We can jeer Griffin, and claim a fair and tolerant society should not accept such odious people. Yet, the simple truth is that the British National party fills a void and raises social taboos that others are not willing to address.
However much I disagree with Griffin’s anti-Semitism, homophobia, Islamophobia, racism and xenophobia, there needs to be an honest and open debate on immigration. Perhaps schools should reflect how the United Kingdom was constituted, along with examples of how we have benefited from immigration, such as the thousands who fought for Britain during the world wars, and the modern example of the NHS, which would be in a worse state if it was not for foreign expertise.
John Hughes
Llanrwst, Conwy
A liability for all to see
What is ignored in the debate about Griffin is, what happens if the BNP replaced him with somebody with smoother communication skills and less vitriolic baggage? Not only would this have nullified most of the attacks on Griffin during Question Time that were largely based on inflammatory remarks he’s made in the past but it would also significantly increase the political threat of the BNP. Griffin is a liability. Let’s hope the BNP is too stupid to realise this.
Ged Shields
Sheffield, South Yorkshire
Dangerous sympathies
As the grandson of German Jews killed in Bergen-Belsen and the son of concentration camp survivors whose life was effectively destroyed by the Nazis, I have every reason to oppose Griffin. Yet, I found myself disconcertingly sympathetic to him during the disgraceful mob-lynching-like exercise of Question Time.
What made me switch over was the shock of finding myself associating Straw with Goebbels and the audience with the pig-ignorant mob of the Kristallnacht. While, rationally, the correspondence does not hold, of course, my emotive reaction to the spectacle arguably illustrates the existence of a dangerous “pseudo-liberal” (=illiberal) strand in British society.
Professor Michael Leschziner
London SW7
Dimbleby’s blind spots
Minette Marrin’s condemnation of the BBC for its “pusillanimous political correctness” and, by implication, its obsession with ratings, was incisive. She did seem, however, in her support for “the scrupulous manner of David Dimbleby”, to display a blind (soft?) spot. The programme could have been rescued had the chairman allowed more equal contributions and moved the debate onto the economy, the postal strike and Afghanistan.
Mark Smith
London SE21
Nationalist iceberg
While I agreed with much of what little Griffin was allowed to say, what is holding me back from voting BNP is that I see the party as an iceberg. It’s the two-thirds I can’t see which worries me. I don’t class myself as racist in any way. Throughout my long career I have met many great people from the “ethnic minorities” and have been happy to call them my friends. However, I am first and foremost English. Jack Straw incensed me when he tried to put a viewpoint which I, and everyone I speak to, totally disagrees with as the feelings of the “British people”.
Eddie Wardle
Nottingham
Brick Lane Briton
Griffin’s reference to the “indigenous British” (sic) got me thinking. My family history, I suspect, lends me to easily claim that accolade, by dint of my father’s side being traceable to 1603, my mother’s to 1757. I am a Christian and have served in HM forces. Therefore, I am an ideal BNP membership candidate. To compound matters, I am a white person living in the heart of a Bangladeshi community, in the very East End of London which Griffin states has disappeared. Why then do I find him and his party an anathema?
Alan Mead
London E1
High praise
AA Gill’s searchingly intelligent article on Griffin further enhanced the fine standards maintained in your august columns.
Peter Lamb
Bournemouth
Churchill’s views
Churchill actually accused Gandhi of being a “Middle Temple lawyer masquerading as a half-naked fakir”. I am not sure what he objected to most.
Andy McLaren
London N3

THE comments by Christopher Meyer “(“Drop the global idealism, Britain must start to play diplomatic hardball”, News Review, October 18) might well have been made about the Home Office, particularly his condemnation of the cult of management by objectives. Towards the end of my time in charge of the immigration service, when we were still managing to maintain reasonably effective controls in the face of ever-increasing bogus asylum-seekers and holders of falsified travel documents, the twin nightmares of output measurement and performance indicators were imposed by the Home Office under pressure from the Treasury. They soon became the only standards by which the service was judged.
In the case of Heathrow, terminal 3, which handled the majority of flights from “pressure to migrate” countries, a requirement was imposed to clear 80% of all passengers within 15 minutes of arrival in the control area. I resisted, pointing out that the only way it could be achieved was by allowing those to enter who would be refused entry if questioned at length, and that it was essential to differentiate between flights from Africa, the Indian subcontinent and the Far East and those from, say, North America. I was labelled a dinosaur.
I was the last head of the immigration service to have worked as an immigration officer. Today, senior officials in the Border Agency, or whatever they are calling themselves this week, have no experience of how controls operate at our ports and airports. Instead they wallow in what Meyer has described as the madness of Soviet statistics, as demonstrated by their recent efforts to remove 40 failed asylum-seekers to Iraq, 30 of them being refused entry on arrival in Baghdad. A very expensive failure.
Peter Tompkins
Head of UK Immigration Service 1981-1991
Official nonsense
As a long-term member of the Home Office, with diplomatic experience, I agree entirely that the cross-department, culture of management by scattergun target achievement and its attendant nonsense-speak has eroded everything I held dear in the first 30 years of my service.
I also identify with his analysis of the nugatory contribution we are making to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Why, oh why, are we there beyond the initial culling of the dreadful Saddam Hussein and his cronies, and why do we think we can do any more than we and others have failed to achieve in Afghanistan in the past?
David Ellis
Deal, Kent

I daresay AA Gill hoped that he was aligning himself with Hemingway when he wrote his misguided piece about shooting a baboon to satisfy his “curiosity” about what it felt like to kill someone (Table talk, Style, last week). He has highlighted that he is a self-indulgent fool with no moral compass. Shocking is not the same thing as worthy of publication.
Rachel Coldbreath
London SE6
Kill for food, not for fun
“Some frogs, a pig, a chicken, a cow and a baboon all died in the writing of this column” writes Gill after his restaurant review. But nobody ate the baboon. I’m an enthusiastic carnivore, but to kill animals for sport, fun or fur coats can never be justified. I’ve always been a great fan of Gill’s columns, but this made me feel sad and angry.
Lesley Millar
London SW11

THE idea of the Scots being descended from an Egyptian daughter of pharaoh is not as batty as it sounds (“McFayed leads Scots rebellion”, News, last week). The tradition is, in fact, Irish and much older than the Scotichronicon. It forms the basis of many medieval Irish poems and is a central tenet of the 11th-century roll of the Irish kings.
The legend is that Feinius was one of the 72 chieftains who went to build the Tower of Babel. He had two sons, Noenal and Niul. Niul was famed for his command of the languages of the world and he was sent for by the pharaoh to teach him the languages. So delighted was pharaoh with Niul, that he gave his daughter, Scota, to him in marriage. It is Scota who gives her name to the Scots and Gael, their first-born who gives his name to the Gaelic nation. They were supposed to have flourished about 2500BC.
Sadly for Mohamed al-Fayed, it is only the Gaelic Scots who have Egyptian blood, the lowland Scots themselves are allegedly descended from the Greeks.
Tim Concannon
Petersfield, Hampshire
A logical move north
I doubt Fayed can produce a shred of evidence to substantiate the myth of Gaythelos, Scota, and the Scythians who fetched up on our ancient shores. On the other hand, we must marvel at those academics who dismiss the entire legend as fictitious.
We can be sure of one thing. Some time after the retreat of the ice caps, there was a significant movement of populations northward. They could only have come from the Mediterranean area and the Middle East, so, broadly speaking, al-Fayed’s assertion has the benefit of logic. No doubt this fundamental truth was once dressed up for dramatic effect and political expediency, but given that mass migrations were manifestly taking place, the notion that we may have a connection with Egypt cannot readily be dismissed.
David Black
Edinburgh

Well I must be off

best wishes John

Keep the Aspidistra Flying 31 October2009

October 31, 2009 by johnblakey

Keep the Aspidistra Flying 31 October2009

Mary is reading Keep the Aspidistra Flying by George Orwell and emitting irritated bursts of steam every now and then. Orwell has obviously gone out of fashion. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keep_the_Aspidistra_Flying I think she would have enjoyed the Decline of the English Murder better: http://www.netcharles.com/orwell/essays/decline-of-english-murder.htm She thinks he is a bleak writer, who loathed his characters. Orwell most famous works are Animal Farm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_Farm and 1984 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nineteen_Eighty-Four . 1984 was famously one of the book that was remotely ‘deleted’ on the Amazon electronic book reader Kindle.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/jul/17/amazon-kindle-1984 So you foolishly thought that you ‘owned’ the books that you bought and downloaded? No in turns out that you only have a ‘license to read them’ Orwell would have loved this concept. I think I’ll stick to the good old fashioned printed kind and hit anyone on the head who tries to break into my house and steal my copy.
Still its curious how life strives to imitate art, The Labour government seems to be more or less unconsciously following the path to 1984. With mass surveillance, a legal culture where it is assumed that you are guilty until proved innocent by police check; except if you are a MP fiddling your expenses of course. Other measures include: a curtailment of the right to free speech, a steady erosion of privacy (what an out dated concept!) and civil liberties is obviously seeking to imitate Ingsoc in 1984. Ingsoc which was based on the Labour Party stood for English Socialism, Orwell was obviously more prescient than thought at the time. Family life too is being undermined by various laws. The police are politicized using their resources to police Climate change demonstrators, rather than preventing feral youths from harassing to the point of suicide innocent mothers. Its remarkably how far we have come, or rather been driven along the 1984 road. It only remains for the Labour Party to pass a law forcing us to love Gordon Brown. I think I’d rather die.
The government would tell us of course that all these measures are ‘for or own good’. Though they will neglect to explain if these measures are so good for us then why are then not equally good for Members of Parliament, and the government themselves. Lets have them under CCTV and see what they are up to just for a change. Alas they never will, for secrecy is deep in their bones.
Where is Orwell today when we need him? Alas we cannot expect even a basic level of intelligence from the commentariate and chattering classes, obsessed only with celebrity culture and their own privileges.

Postcards

Rembrandt (1606 – 1669) Girl at a window
http://www.flickr.com/photos/emperordalek/4057195829/

Ricard Canals (1876 – 1931) Motherhood
http://www.flickr.com/photos/emperordalek/4057934658/

George Square,Glasgow, Scotland George Square,Glasgow, Scotland
http://www.flickr.com/photos/emperordalek/4057197259/

Sled dogs at sunset, Canada
http://www.flickr.com/photos/emperordalek/4057936078/

Graf Schwerin Lowitz, Brecon mountain railway,
http://www.flickr.com/photos/emperordalek/4057198829/

Obituary: Nelly Arcan: author of Putain and Folle

On her 15th birthday Nelly Arcan vowed that she would kill herself on her 30th. The day before that anniversary arrived, she had finished her second book. Although in another fraught state, she resisted the fatal temptation, and lived to publish a third novel, her best yet. But at 35, the beautiful, gamine, waywardly brilliant French-Canadian writer committed suicide a month before publication of her fourth novel.
Her first novel, Putain (2001), helped to bolster the money she was making as a well-paid call-girl while studying at the University of Montreal. Her work as a whole, however, catches the spirit of that city’s jeunesse dorée at the turn of the century, congregating in cafés, laptops in hand, and struggling with the angst of youth.
Nelly Arcan was born in 1973 as Isabelle Fortier into a Catholic family in the Lac Mégantic area on the border with Maine. In Putain she played up differences between her parents and referred to herself as “moi, issue d’une aberration”.
The atmosphere in her family was made fraught by an older sister’s very young death, but, as she describes in Folle (2004), there was considerable merriment provided by the entertainingly astringent views of her grandfather, who had been born in 1902 and was of the view that mankind would less evolve than dissolve. Fruitier were conversations with an aunt whose Tarot cards always failed to reveal Isabelle’s future.
That lay not in small-town life but in studying in Montreal, to which her father drove her and deplored “la cacophonie des langues et de l’architecture”. She, however, was to thrive in this 1990s bustle, although with a certain diffidence which did not preclude a fascination with mirrors. “Actually, I’m extremely attentive,” she said. “I watch how I talk to others. I’m the sort of person at a party who keeps to herself and blends in.”
While beginning to assume a new persona as Nelly Arcan, she worked on a master’s thesis about Daniel Paul Schreber, the 19th-century German judge who, beset by mental problems, wrote Memoirs of My Nervous Illness, to which Freud drew wider attention. As for herself, she was to produce a memoir, in the form of fiction (the things she did not tell her analyst), about the various forces which drew her to augment student funds by going on the game through a highpaying agency.
With its many long sentences, flowing, more than spilling, from page to page, Putain works far better in French than its American translation. Its very first page catches a forthright, fragile being: “Même pas une putain mais une poupée d’air, une parcelle d’image cristallisée.” She had liked the idea, even the empowerment, of regarding sex as a labour much like any other, such as cooking paté; that it was only bringing out a natural strand in her — “J’étais déjà putain avant de l’être.” She certainly did not shirk details of this other life, from the fluff left on the sheets to, well — she remarks that at times it felt like the 123rd day of Sodom. Graphic as it is, the abiding tone is apocalyptic, with much searing reminiscence of her parents, musing upon her own age, and great, prescient emphasis upon picturing herself dead (“leur fille chérie suicidée”). For all that, its detail is often remarkable, such as the client with a stump of an arm, “une feuille d’automne qui résiste au passage de l’hiver”.
A contender for various distinguished prizes, Putain sold well, and any suspicion it aroused that she would be a high-maintenance girlfriend was confirmed by Folle (2004). Almost a compound of Wilde’s De Profundis and such Dylan put-downs as Positively 4th Street, it is addressed to the man — a journalist with a hankering to write a novel — who has dumped her after a relationship which had progressed, amid a world of drink and drugs, to their writing (sometimes awkwardly so) in the same café. In the novel she says to him: “Ton écriture ne m’intéressait pas, mais toi, si”. She watches Sex and the City with the sound turned down while contending with his absence, which she further tries to ease by viewing all his Woody Allen films and reading a Céline novel that he esteems. She finds that she loathes both the film director and the writer. The journalist has also left her pregnant, and her reluctant abortion — amid much about The X-Files — is chronicled with a raw tenderness that defies quotation.
Meanwhile her grandfather had died at 101, confounding his family with a last breath which appeared to call upon the Devil. By that time Arcan had become a well-known figure, writing a raunchy column in a weekly freesheet. But she could not escape morbid thoughts. With À ciel ouvert (2007) she turned a communication-hungry era to new account by adapting her Montreal life into a brisk, stylishly constructed thriller.
Now with a boyfriend eight years her junior (“he doesn’t read any books, so why should he read mine?”), Arcan looked set for a new direction in her writing. The imminent publication of Paradis clef en main, however, can only round off all too brief a career.
Arcan is survived by her parents, whom she told not to